Bruce Springsteen Says He Addresses The Soul Of His Listeners

Nearly 50 years after being signed to Columbia Records — Bruce Springsteen is still writing songs he hopes will matter to his audience. With the Top Two success of his latest album, Letter To You, Springsteen is offering some hope in an otherwise miserable year for fans.

“The Boss” spoke about his work to Britain's The Mirror, and explained, “I try to insert something that can, in certain moments, address your inner life by revealing my own. To be a spiritual songwriter means you are primarily addressing the soul of your listeners. I would say I am a good storyteller and people like stories that connect to your emotional life.”

Springsteen went on to say he wanted his music to live alongside his audience: “I want people to vacuum floors to my music, to diaper their babies to my music.”

When pressed about how his work is just as beloved in Europe as it is in the States, he reasoned, “Europeans are interested in America and myth, those stories I have told since I was a young man. I really studied and perfected my writing skills very, very intensely. I was a one-track mind. Before anything — before work, girls — I was always music, music, music, 24 hours a day, seven-days-a-week.”

During his 2005 VH1 Storytellers taping, Bruce Springsteen shed light on the parts of himself he shares in the songs he writes: “It's like anything else, y'know? You obviously, you put a lot of yourself in the songs, and it's songs, and it's an aesthetic, and it's a presentation; and you can't write without pullin' all this stuff up out of yourself. That's what makes it feel real. That's what makes it communication. But, I guess it's always an incomplete picture. That's what keeps me writing (laughs).”

Bruce Springsteen & The Street Band will serve as Saturday Night Live's musical guest on December 12th.