OCD Chronicles: Bruce Springsteen "Human Touch"

I was checking out some raunchy old-man-on-teen-girl porn when the laptop tried out a nifty virus that’s pretty elusive and protective. Protective in the sense that it wouldn’t let me figure out who he was so that I could kill him. Now, the laptop is getting gutted for a hefty price and hopefully all of the shit (rightings, reviews, and jpegs of hot gramps-on-girl action) can be saved.
Particularly since a lot of this site’s content is sitting on its exposed harddrive.
In the meantime, it’s important to document another O.C.D. track that’s been at the ready during commutes and on the dome while at work dealing with rich cocksuckers.
Side note: I’m fairly confident that I don’t like 87.65% of the residents in New Jersey.
Which is strange because my current song is one from a resident of New Jersey. What’s even stranger is that the selection is the title track of a fairly unforgettable 1992 album called Human Touch.
It’s weak. It’s pedestrian. And, in some ways, it’s perfect: An average Springsteen song that’s sounds like a lift of another average Springsteen song which means that it’s better than most of the songs on the radio anyway. Is it Bruuuce going through the motions? Perhaps, but it’s still Bruuuce.
And that’s the key with Human Touch and the mildly better companion Lucky Town: they’re the sound of one of rock’s most notoriously hard-working rockers settling down in his middle age. Fuck, it even admits as much at the end of the first verse:
“In the end what you don’t surrender
Well, the world just strips away”
As mild-mannered as it is, “Human Touch” has a few great things going for it. The first, as the last quote demonstrates is that it’s, big fucking surprise here, wonderfully well written. The title track, more than any other song on Human Touch, tries to set clear expectations with long standing fans who found The Boss’ early 90’s choices a little off-settling (no E Street Band were seemingly replaced by a bunch of session players). “Ain’t nobody drawing wine from this blood” he admits in one line of the song, while finding some strangely inspired vocal takes with his wife during that part in the bridge where they go “Oh girl, that feeling of safety you prize/Well, it comes at a hard, hard price.”
It gives me goosebumps, just as the line “I know I ain’t nobody’s bargain/But hell, a little touch up and a little paint…” puts a big-ass grin on my face every fucking time.
I saw Bruce during this tour. It was my second meeting with The Boss and even in the company of his younger, nameless backing band, he still managed to rock the joint. Even the pap material of the Human/Lucky pair sounded great, and Bruce looked fairly inspired throughout the set
You may have been able to compile the best points of Springsteen’s twin ’92 offerings into something on the same level as Tunnel Of Love but whatever. For me, right at this moment, the best Bruce song ever recorded was nothing but a replica of a previously recorded track that didn’t even catch my ear the first time it came around