In light of the renewed interest in Bruce Springsteen that seems to have cropped up in the wake of his inauguration concert and Super Bowl halftime show performances, let me preface this post by saying that I am not a die-hard fan of the Boss. I like him, I very much enjoy some of his songs, and I am happy when they come on the radio. But I am unfamiliar with most of his discography and have never been to one of his concerts, and I know enough actual Bruce Springsteen fans to realize that this places me firmly in the category of “just a normal dude.” So when I say that the highly disliked “Queen of the Supermarket,” from his new album, is a great little song, this does not come from the realm of fanboy mind-blindness.
Like right, OK, I get the point of this video—the song would make for an unusually well-produced A&P ad. But I think Bruce is on to something nevertheless. Here’s how he explained the inspiration for the song:
They opened up this big, beautiful supermarket near where we lived. Patti and I would go down, and I remember walking through the aisles - I hadn’t been in one in a while - and I thought his place is spectacular. This place is… it’s a fantasy land!…If there’s a supermarket and all these things are there, well, there has to be a queen. And if you go there, of course there is. There’s millions of them, so it’s kind of a song about finding beauty where it’s ignored or where it’s passed by.
What else would you want from Bruce Springsteen, right? Sanctifying American iconography is what he does, and what people love him for. Roads, radios, bars, Saturday night—they pass through his pen and they seem immortal. But the almost universally negative reaction it’s receiving reveals that Bruce’s ultimate talent is not so much in the sanctifying as in picking iconography that everyone can already agree deserves to be sanctified. There’s nothing particularly noble about the things he sings about, after all—roads are as often a source of frustration as they are of freedom, being a teenager sucks on the whole, and America has more than its fair share of problems. But in the abstract, and surrounded by the massed sympathetic American symbolism of drums and guitars, we can think of these things with a rosy glow. There’s no reason to think supermarkets would be any different.
Maybe this is just a matter of taste, after all—when Blender’s Rob Tannenbaum says that “it accidentally turns into a Meatloaf song,” he apparently means it as a criticism—and if the song doesn’t actually convey the beauty Bruce finds in the supermarket, then that’s certainly a failure of his work as a songwriter. But I don’t think he’s wrong to find it there in the first place, and a lot of the reactions (as with the video) seem premised on the idea that the very connection is inherently ridiculous. It’s not. Supermarkets represent a kind of perfection previously unfulfilled in human history, an absolute denial of the deprivation and constant drive for survival that have driven us as a species. The climate is perfect; the lighting is gentle and soothing; the layout is roughly similar from one store to another. You will never, ever die in a supermarket. They are a kind of immanentized heaven, and for that reason necessarily offensive from a certain perspective. But as an actual experience, and as a representation of the kind of wonders America as a thing has been able to achieve—setting the consequences for everyone not inside the supermarket aside for a moment, as all of Bruce’s songs do—they hum with amazement. Maybe Bruce could’ve used a few more guitars to get that point across, but it remains.
You will never, ever die in a supermarket.
Well, almost. (Said market is down the road from where I work so that’s why it came to mind.)
I like the song. I will also openly admit to being somewhat of a Bruce fanboy. Nonetheless, there are songs on the new album, and many more over the last decade that I genuinely dislike.
I really like what you’ve written Mike. I appreciate and enjoy the way in which the songs works for you, and also the way in which Bruce expresses his intention for the song. Personally I took it a little more literally and without some of the iconic ramifications, but that’s just how it hit me at first, so as always: to each his own.
And in the end, Art should never require a defense. It is what it is and one’s appreciation of it within its own medium shouldn’t be influenced by the collective understanding of it. The idea of ‘attacking’ or ‘defending’ has always implied to me an attempt to influence the experience of the art, which is more insulting to the nature of artistic expression itself than the artist being discussed.
one of my favorite songs on the album, although I can’t really understand the extreme reaction to it on either side.
The song stinks. Doesn’t matter the inspiration behind the tune, or trying to justify the meaning, blah, blah, blah. It’s cheesy, and nowhere near the high standards, that should be expected from somebody who is considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
We’ve never seen/
a keener/
window cleaner/
If David Byrne wrote this song people would be flipping their lids. I’m with you, Barthel.
“You will never, ever die in a supermarket.”
That’s not what the gypsy told me.
Wrong singer for the song. Needs somebody a little more fey. And did he just say “fuckin’”?
Musically, I really enjoy it… lyrically, it’s obvious Springsteen doesn’t take it too seriously, so it works for me.
But even if you have the opposite reaction and cringe, surely the line
“I turn back for a moment and catch a smile
That blows this whole fucking place apart”
more than redeems it?
What I think’s [b]really[/b] interesting about it is how completely, utterly at odds with the presentation of the supermarket in The Wrestler. Not saying it’s a bad thing, just curious that on the same album, Springsteen can both sympathize brilliantly with that movie’s protagonist and portray his soul-crushing working environment in such an idealized way.
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned how thematically similar this is to Dean Friedman’s “I’m in Love With the McDonald’s Girl,” later recorded by Barenaked Ladies.
The difference being that “McDonald’s Girl” was about a teenage boy’s crush on a teenage girl, whereas this song is apparently about fiftysomething guy’s creepy attraction to the hottest checkout clerk at Albertson’s.
Every supermarket should be like the one in “Cashback.”