Bruce Springsteen – Lift Me Up
“This heart, this heart, this wilderness.”
“Lift Me Up” is one of Springsteen’s many triumphs, involving an improbably gorgeous falsetto over faint guitar and a layer of composed, swelling keyboard synthetic. His voice is haunting and almost unknowable compared to the grit and grunt of famed Springsteen deliveries. It’s a unique instrument, only ever accompanied by the track’s own instrumentation (all executed by Springsteen), never obscured. The song conveys the same sensibilities as “Streets of Philadelphia”, “Gave It a Name”, and “Sad Eyes”; slow, assured and ethereal. Most importantly, it is highly affecting. And Springsteen’s lyrics are compelling. They are curt, and without ever conveying the clarity of storytelling they settle in the bones. The lyrical nuances, the dance between the romantic and the adulterous, make for an emotionally involving, appealingly earnest narrator. I’m convinced of an air of guilt and a sorrowful tone, however; the risk-taker come undone, aiming toward an act of atonement–one unanswered. Whether it’s in the rejection of tradition (“I don’t need your answered prayers / I don’t need your sacred vow”) or the unreliable promises of tomorrow (“When the morning bright / Lifts away this night / We will find our love”), there’s an unresolved struggle between long term and short term happiness.