Immanual Kant's categorical imperative boiled down to a lesson in morals:among them, always tell the truth. The analogy he used was, what if a man comes to you and asks where your brother is because he wants to go and kill him. You should tell the truth, for instance if he is in the house, say he is in the house. Here was Kant's logic. If you lie and say he is in the park not the house, your brother may have already left to the park and you'd have lied and inadverently caused his death. Ergo, keep to the imperative always.
Which leads us to this: According to Rolling Stone Mag, Springsteen told Bob Seger that Bruce's next album will be his best in years. Where will that leave RS loathsome 5 star review of "Working On A Dream"? If Dream is 5 stars out of 5 stars, what can they make his new one when Bruce is, indeed, correct and it is a return to form?
I loathe the album though my former editor Bill Holdship thinks it's great. Fine, let's say it is a 4 star album. It sure ain't a 5 star album. I just listened to Holdship's fave "Surprise Surprise" -a jingly jangly Byrds zoom lens. Not bad -better than the title track that's for sure.
Springsteen knows it's a dog. I saw him a coupla times on that tour and by the end he had dumped everything but two songs from it.
Now Rolling Stone will do their usual revisionist twist. They will try and explain how ir can be better than his best and again the truth gets smacked about thru cronyism, ignorance and arrogance. Springsteen deserves to have friends who write the truth about him and so do you. Always tell the truth when you write about music, if you are lying, then why are you bothering? And don't be friends with rock stars (I won't even really interview any more). The moral imperative: TELL THE TRUTH or you will have to explain why Springsteen thinks his latest album is better than his best.