Bruce Springsteen: "Radio Nowhere"

In order for me to not like this track, I would probably have to hear that the Boss, it's been revealed, has stooped to getting his jollies by peeing on an underage girl. There's video evidence. Only revolting strife, the kind that eventually seeps into the Western proscenium, amplifying in grotesqueness until the Boss and Max Weinberg and Little Steven Headband are heard to be collaborating on out-of-step triads that represent and essentially mimic the act of peeing on underage girls, only that drastic degree of exorcism could so deter my devotion. And yet, a straining elegy of post-BJ jizm and lingerie fetishism ("Reno") was possibly the best cul-de-sac Devils & Dust (2005) could offer without the E-Street Band farting contrails over the master bed. Gritty Boss is unimpeachable Boss; remember "She's the One," the unassailable, anthemic grime, the symbolic marriage of Nebraska-before-Nebraska (1984) and every grinning, lady-pants'd photo shoot they ever did?

"Radio Nowhere" is all of that, all of everything mythic about Springsteen and his group, like a tribute show to being in a freakin' sweet band that doesn't give two shits about the furrowed, rehashed, old-sounding stuff that band's played in so many words before. Shit one: the lyrics are beyond ridiculous, some husky patter about some dying Luddite something. Shit two: the simple existence of a wiggling sax solo in this song, the fact that the solo must absolutely be twenty years old because it's obviously attempting to show up the carburetor guitar, it does not faze this song. It's free from iTunes after all. And the guy's steel. He's expensive. Bruce Springsteen cannot be touched -- fucking back off.