The Way Through Fear is To Keep Going

Bruce Springsteen Walks Out of a Black Hole and Finds God's Light

The dynamics of love, fear, and the road

The Road Always Beckons

Here’s something you must know about Bruce Springsteen’s music: he writes a lot of love songs, but the road is usually the other woman.

The road is always beckoning the narrator of Springsteen’s songs, as a mode of escape (Thunder Road), the thing that saves the wayward from the law (Highway Patrolman) a siren that will kill him (Wreck on the Highway), or in this case, as a quiet side piece in case the young lover doesn’t satisfy his restless heart¹.

The road, in other words, is Springsteen’s way of asking what it means to persevere: does it mean to flee down the highway, or to dig in year over year in the same place?

Tunnel of Love was a turning point for Springsteen’s career: he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams with Born in the USA, finally emerged as a solo star, and found little but misery in the process. He was getting divorced, and it was time for him to scratch out his 8th album, and first solo since his basement tape album Nebraska. It’s an album marked as much by what’s not there as what is: there’s no top-10 radio hits, no E-Street Band. It’s mostly synthesizers and lament. It’s also one of his best.