Kranz On Copy: Insights and answers on copywriting and writing copy

Even though I was in Connecticut Saturday, driving on an interstate, I couldn't help but think of the state where I grew up, New Jersey, because to live in New Jersey is to drive on one interstate or another (usually one at a time, but not always). And to drive on a Jersey interstate is to live the life, such as it is, given voice in Bruce Springsteen's songs.

So I thought about Bruce Springsteen, too. The Jersey Turnpike is as much a part of my personal mythology as it is of Springsteen's public one. I've walked the boardwalks in Asbury Park and Atlantic City, and I've seen Mary's dress wave too many times to count.

Funny thing -- though I'm no stranger to Bruce's world, his songs no longer resonate with me the same way as, say, those of Dylan or the Stones or even Elvis Costello or the Ramones. I rarely reach for a Springsteen album, and when I hear his songs on the radio, they sound remote, as if they were speaking from a place that was once a favorite hang-out, but is now a shuttered nightclub, gone and nearly forgotten.

Okay, so part of that is geography: I'm in Massachusetts and haven't lived in Jersey since 1990. Part of that is age: I'm way past being (or imagining myself as) a frustrated adolescent "born to run."

But, I suspect, a good part of it is that the world has changed, too. Springsteen wrote about a world of mills, factories and unions. A world in which fathers grew old living "the working, it's the working, just the working life." A world, perhaps, of quiet despair. And one where young people could anticipate the same working grind as their parents; the thing they were "born to run" from.

Now, the mills are closed. The factories decay. The unions are much weaker. Instead of working regular shifts with benefits, vacations and an income that could hold a mortgage, Springsteen's people are working at Wal-Mart and Costco at wages that barely make the rent. Here's the rub: today, people wouldn't run from the jobs Bruce sang about, they'd run to them -- if they existed.

Truth is, Bruce's music sounds a little off-key now because it's hard to feel rage or fear or frustration at a working life that, by today's standards, is actually a pretty good deal. Or at least a better one.