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Bruce Springsteen’s new album will be released on Tuesday, and although my goal of not hearing a note of it until then wasn’t met–NPR played a snippet of “Radio Nowhere” earlier this week–I have been reading as much about it as I can. Today, the New York Times‘ film critic, A.O. Scott describes a recent trip out to Asbury Park to interview the Boss following a morning rehearsal at the old Convention Hall there. There’s much too much lyric-related wordplay for my taste, but Scott writes one paragraph that perfectly sums up Springsteen’s music, and how I feel about it:

Mr. Springsteen’s best songs [...] are about compromise and stoicism; disappointment and faith; work, patience and resignation. They are also, frequently — even the ones he wrote when he was still in his 20s — about nostalgia, about the desire to recapture those fleeting moments of intensity and possibility we associate with being young.

Exactly. I don’t identify with Bruce Springsteen’s music because I walk streets of fire; I identify with them because, like me, Bruce is a nostalgist.