Bruce Springsteen has been a rock star for decades, fostering a heartfelt relationship with his audience. This is not only due to his precisely designed and musically diverse albums, which reflect the significance of different phases of his life and whose engaging songs encompass all genres of American pop music. Springsteen also bases his music and the messages associated with it on direct contact with the audience: he achieves this special bond through his concerts, which are characterised by extreme physical intensity, his understanding of rock’n’roll as a musical tradition, which includes emphatic anthems as well as sharing personal stories, his committed statements on socio-political debates as well as his examination of age and transience. The latter were also the central theme of Springsteen’s tour in 2023, whose stages Nicolas Pethes chooses as a guiding line when he follows Springsteen’s »lifetime conversation with [his] audience« and uses numerous testimonies from fans to show that the idea of such communication between artist and audience is no mere illusion. Instead, it is based on serious emotions and practices, which Nicolas Pethes compiles in a knowledgeable and entertaining way.
Nicolas Pethes, born in 1970, is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Cologne. He has led research projects on medical case histories, journal literature and the history of media-critical discourses. He is co-editor of the journal »POP. Kultur und Kritik« since 2012.
