Springsteen's soon to be released album 'Wrecking Ball'

[Dave Burr]

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... h-20120119

Probably a "shoe-in" to be nominated for a Grammy... However, there's already one album named "Wrecking Ball" to have received one.. Emmylou Harris album from '95 produced by Daniel Lanois with the title track having been written by Neil Young. Like Emmy's, Bruce's new album takes it's title from one of the cut's.

[on soapbox]
I know it happens, but I'm not so sure I think it's cool to cop the same name of an album that received critical acclaim. I would feel the same way if Emmylou or Tom Petty or Snoop Dog released an album called "Born To Run" or "Born In the U.S.A."...? It gives (to me) the appearance that the artist lacks respect for the previous work.
[off soapbox]

[Tim Victor]

I wonder if this is just one of those "lesser artists borrow, great artists steal" things. The rest of us might worry about a song sounding too much like Bruce, but maybe it's just never been his way to waste time thinking "Is this too much like Woody Guthrie?" or "I wonder if that's too close to Dylan."

FWIW, there have been a ton of albums with something about a wrecking ball in the name and it seemed kinda cliché to me even when Emmylou's came out. Grace Slick had one--not a very good one, which is probably worse--called Welcome to the Wrecking Ball just a few years before.

I haven't listened to them back to back in a while but Red Dirt Girl is a better title and at least as good an album--Bruce and Patti sang on it btw. "One Big Love" is my favorite song of hers from that time for sure. But I digress...

As for the Grammy awards, these are the same numbskulls who gave Best New Artist to A Taste of Honey over Elvis Costello, and gave the first ever Hard Rock/Metal Performance award to Jethro Tull over Metallica. (In 1988! In 1971, you could've at least made a case for Aqualung has there been such an award at the time.) I'd be happier to leave those petards out of it entirely.

Anyway, at this stage of the game, if Bruce is OK with it then that's how it's gonna be. He's earned it if you ask me.

[David Mason]

That song "Wrecking Ball" is sort of annoying. "Sincerity as marketing technique" is a hobby of mine, and Springsteen is asking old people with their walkers and canes to "break out their wrecking ball" in a manner equivalent to an angry young man from the (white) Jersey ghettos? Yeesh. He was a wordy Dylanophile when he first came out, then when Jon Landau got a hold of him he began writing about riding in a car with a girl. Many, many times... I mean, he probably thinks he is sincere his own self, but it's like a celebration of dumb ordinariness or something. Yay! I'm dumb! I'M ORDINARY!