The open road is the great American literary device. Whether the example is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the national canon is full of travel tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its dark corners and lost wanderers, but ultimately capture the hope that a better life is at the end of a long drive.
~ Spencer Kornhaber via The Atlantic

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The song that has most influenced pop music of the past decade might be one released in 1984: Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire.” With a rhythm that was twitchy but not quite danceable, with desperate vocals and cooling puddles of reverb, “I’m on Fire” was ballad and banger, confessional and slick, embodied and ghostly. Springsteen sang of being trapped on the edge of catharsis, and the music seemed to want to suspend time.
~ Spencer Kornhaber via The Atlantic

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