Bruce Springsteen? Music blogs don’t need to write about Bruce Springsteen! He’s a legend, he’s got all the press he needs, right? I disagree, and I’ll tell you why. Bruce Springsteen’s collections of late have proven to be hit-and-miss, and I don’t think there’s a rock critic in the world who would disagree. People still associate him with Born In The U.S.A., seeing it as a positive athemic allegory to the glory of the U.S.A. But if you’ve read further (and I know some of you have), you would know that the success of the album and the imagery attached to it is a mere fluke of time and circumstance. Bruce is a grand protest singer, a poetic spokesman for the working class hero, a songwriter who has never taken his success for granted.

There in his heart lives a folk singer, an allegiant servant of the music that brought him into the fold. It makes sense, then, when you hear his newest collection, We Shall Overcome – The Seeger Sessions, one of Springsteen’s finest. The 13 songs, culled from various Pete Seeger albums, are an inspired collection of Americana that pays tribute to one of American folk music’s legends, Pete Seeger. Digging into the music of an era gone by, Springsteen has reworked a series of songs, both joyous and spiritual, that can bring people together through song.

In a recent interview, Springsteen talked about the importance of dedication to one’s work, saying “Part of doing your job well is being able to slip into somebody else’s shoes and to find out out what you have in common with them — and therefore bringing your audience closer to those characters and those people.” It is with this compassion and this fearlessness that Springsteen and his Seeger Sessions Band deliver a powerful album that crosses generations, lines of race and economic hardship, searching for the things which give us common ground. Listen to his version of “Jesse James” and hear the Bruce Springsteen that I have always admired — the one who can see the beauty in ordinary things and make that beauty shine.

Listen to “Jesse James” by Bruce Springsteen

We Shall Overcome – The Seeger Sessions is available now from Amazon.Com by clicking here.