Given how heavily Bruce Springsteen has drawn on R&B throughout his career, an album dedicated to the genre, like Only the Strong Survive, feels somewhat inevitable. Many of these songs weren’t written by the artists who sang them, so the album continues a chain of reinterpretation. The Boss eschews obvious selections, choosing songs like the Four Tops’s 1981 hit “When She Was My Girl” over standards like “My Girl.”
Whether or not Springsteen intended to demonstrate the artificial divides that separate rock, pop, and R&B, the point is clear. Only the Strong Survive remains faithful to the songs’ original arrangements, but on track after track, the singer suggests a spirit of triumph that wipes away the darker lyrical undertones. When, at the end of “7 Rooms of Gloom,” he sings, “When are you coming back?,” his tone removes any doubt that his narrator’s heartache is temporary.
Throughout, producer Ron Aniello successfully replicates a 1960s aesthetic, but the songs lack a certain grit. Springsteen’s ability to convey great passion, even if he needs to strain his voice to do so, has always been his strength, but the sound mix on Only the Strong Survive over-emphasizes the album’s opulent arrangements. On “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do),” for instance, Springsteen’s voice is nearly buried under horns and backing vocals.
It’s possible to make a first-rate album that reveres classic rock or R&B songs as part of the Great American Songbook, as Bettye LaVette did on 2010’s Interpretations, but Springsteen never really pushes himself outside his comfort zone here. The Commodores’s beautiful 1985 hit “Nightshift” was written as an elegy for Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, but Springsteen’s earnest delivery only serves to emphasize his distance from the song’s subjects.
The album’s lush production and cheery mood hint at a jukebox musical, which is no surprise in light of the recent success of Springsteen on Broadway. Only the Strong Survive is an expertly crafted collection, but a rougher hewn approach, with a sound closer in style to Stax Records than Dionne Warwick and Phil Spector, would have better honored the spirit of its source material.
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