The Rockfeedback A-Z of Underrated Records: Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love
By: Matt Tomiak
The Rockfeedback A-Z of Underrated Records is an ever expanding guide to albums, beloved by our writers if not the world at large, that we think you should know about. Records on the list are present in virtue of fulfilling a number of deliberately vague criteria. These can range from the LPs being unfairly slated at the time despite being fantastic, their being lost classics authored by underground artists that have failed to reach the audience they deserve, or true gems unjustly overshadowed by the huge commercial success of an artists' other work. It is our hope that the list will expand into being an exciting guide to collecting life changing music that might not feature in your usual 'The Greatest 100 Records You Must Listen to BEFORE YOU DIE' run downs, and that it will be enjoyed with all the enthusiasm and good natured humour with which it is intended.
If only all midlife crises were this listenable. As he approached his fortieth birthday and the half-way point of his second decade as a phenomenally successful recording artist, the recently-divorced Bruce Springsteen served up perhaps the most personal album of his career.
Tunnel of Love provided a searching spiritual examination that was as far removed from the exhilarating youthful bombast of Born To Run as it was from the frugal, bleak social realism of Nebraska. As Springsteen articulates on the stirring title track, this a record dedicated to a different kind of love triangle: "just the three of us - you, me and all the stuff we're so scared of."
Following the all-conquering Born In The USA was always likely to be a tricky enterprise. But this wasn't to be an album that owed much to contemporary trends. Released at a time when the charts and airwaves were dominated by heavy metal's brashly macho self-assertion or glossy, slickly-crafted pop, Tunnel of Love's brooding introspection, expressed via lush balladry, straightforward blues rock and hushed, minimally-arranged confessionals couldn't have been much further removed from the prevailing mid-80s zeitgeist.
The gnawing insecurity of punching above one's weight romantically is laid bare on 'Brilliant Disguise', whilst ruminations on commitment and emotional endurance like 'Tougher Than The Rest' and 'Walk Like A Man' pre-empt the intimate that Bruce would revisit in the nineties with 'Streets of Philadelphia.'
An intriguing document of a superstar at life's crossroads.