Songs and their personal meanings change over time. Some we hear and instantly they are engrained in our memory forever. Some we bookmark and later in life they come to have an entirely new importance to us. And then there are those whose meaning evolves over time.
Eric Church’s “Springsteen” is one of those to me. A song that harkens to high school freedom and love. When you see Eric live, you can feel every member of his audience recalling the past in synchronicity. Palpably, their teenage angst and emotions are all singing in chorus “Like a soundtrack to a July Saturday night.”
When you see Eric live, you can feel every member of his audience recalling the past in synchronicity.
Thirty years after my high school days, that song helps me fondly remember that time. But a whole new memory was created with my first-born son, Jae. A Saturday afternoon, top down on the Bronco and my young man of a son driving me for the first time. At that moment, he wasn’t my little boy anymore, but a man who I genuinely admire and consider to be one of my greatest joys to be with as a friend. We talked like buddies, and at one point “Springsteen” came on the playlist. I said, “Have you ever really listened to this song?” The poetry, the magical way of pulling up the past without directly saying it. Line by line, we went through the song, and my son and I bonded like never before – like two good friends just having a moment.
Undoubtedly, “Springsteen” is a song about high school love and the memories associated with it. But to me, it will forever be about the moment I watched my son become a man and at that exact moment how much I loved the man he had become.
I think about 17
I think about my old Jeep
I think about the stars in the sky
Funny how a melody sounds like a memory
Like a soundtrack to a July Saturday night
Like the songs you hear on King’s Passage? Then check out the KP Jukebox playlist on Spotify!
