The album’s title is, of course, mostly bluster. Despite its tough-guy posturing, Only the Strong Survive – Bruce Springsteen’s new record of old soul covers – deals in yearning and hurt, in summer nights remembered and love squandered. Its true theme is vulnerability. These, though, are tender moments delivered with the effusive, upbeat vigour of the soul revue segments of Springsteen’s live shows and the Boss’s lived-in, barrel-chested growl: a very feelgood record about feeling bad.
The title track, Only the Strong Survive, was originally recorded by former Impressions singer Jerry Butler in 1968; it finds a heartbroken Butler being consoled by his mother. She prescribes resilience and a brave face: you can’t just go to pieces. (It’s hard not to hear the veiled wisdom of the civil rights struggle here too.) Springsteen and his long-time producer Ron Aniello, who, in the absence of most of the E Street Band, plays the majority of the instruments, add oomph in the form of thrumming organ, a cadre of balmy backing vocalists and the E Street horns. You can hear Springsteen chuckling ruefully in the intro. His brawny vocal – that of an older man – contrasts with the protagonist’s youthful romantic despair.
