A few months ago, I saw Bruce Springsteen for the fifth time in 15 years. I’m still trying to figure out how to think about his music.

As a New Jerseyan of Midwestern origin, I’m a latecomer to Bruce. I was aware of him growing up. People made a big deal of his iconic song Secret Garden on the Jerry McGuire soundtrack. But I thought of him as in the mold of other folk-rockers.

It wasn’t until I started dating a Jersey Girl that I realized that Bruce is something closer to a demigod than a musician in the Garden State. It has taken me a while to understand why.

I am a music nerd with eclectic tastes, and Bruce’s music is weird for me. Most of it doesn’t move me in the same way that so many other great artists do. A big part of it is I’m not sure how I’m supposed to hear his music. I know a good rock song because of the riffs and solos. I know a good hip hop song because of the beat and the delivery. I know a good pop song because of the hook and bridge. I know a good gospel song because of the vocals and grandiose, emotional composition. I know a good band because they’re cool.

Bruce’s music doesn’t want to belong to a genre. It’s big and crowded. A lot of it doesn’t really have a hook. His band’s vibe is kind of corny. The rhythms are square. The piano gives it a jangly sound. I wouldn’t say there are a lot of bands that ride his coattails–they’re on a bit of an island, stylistically.

But when I see something that other people are into and I don’t understand, I try to figure out what I’m missing.

Dude is an athlete

One thing was clear as day from my first Bruce concert: the guy puts on a show with the physicality of an endurance athlete. It’s astonishing. Bruce was already pushing 60 at that first show, and he performed 31 songs. He crowd surfed. I don’t think he even took a rest. I’ve seen very few shows on that level…except for other Bruce shows. The only thing that comes to mind is Prince in 2004.

That was my first clue.

Real poetry

The second is his lyricism. Most of the music I listen to isn’t that lyrically ambitious. The words are there to give you an impression of a topic, not so much tell a story or weave poetry. The goal is to be fun and singable and give the front-person something to perform and to not distract from the overall song.

I have always had an inability to hear words when listening to music, and never really understood that some people simply understand what singers are saying. I also have never been inherently poetic. I can understand lyrical craftsmanship, but I don’t feel poetry in my soul. So these may be reasons why I never latched on to Springsteen organically.

Even with these shortcomings, I can tell that Bruce is a cut above in the poetry department. His songs aren’t always coherent stories or even made of coherent sentences, but they absolutely paint a picture. And famously, much of the subject matter is about deeply seeing regular people and elevating their struggles.

Diehards are rewarded

More recently, I’ve become aware that Bruce and the E Street Band are among the small number of acts where every set is different. I’ve seen probably hundreds of bands, and the vast majority rehearse a tight set and play the same songs in the same order every stop on tour. Bruce’s tours are different every single stop, as you can see on Setlist.fm. Much like the jam bands, Bruce’s most dedicated fans will catch him at multiple tour stops and they are rewarded by unique experiences each time. The band will pull out rarities. I’ve even seen them take requests from the audience. It’s wild.

Kind of like Deadheads and Phishheads, Bruce fans are a community. They namecheck the albums and the tours. They know all the lyrics, all the flourishes, all the solos, and all the call-and-responses. They recognize the deep cuts.

And also, the music

I’ve talked a lot about everything except the actual music. It has grown on me over the years. Seeing Bruce do his one-man-show on Broadway was a big turning point. He stripped his songs of all the orchestration, which made them more raw and powerful. He also told the stories behind them, giving me a whole other perspective.

When it comes to the whole band, there’s a lot of impressive stuff:

• Top notch individual musicians
• Orchestration of such a big band
• Experimentation in song form and songwriting
• Iconic, crowd-pleasing climaxes

You’ve got the Bruce baritone croon and Clarence Clemons sax parts over the square, but propulsive Max Weinberg foundation as the signature sound, but other than that, the songs are all over the map. His body of work is much more like an artistic journey than a career of trying to find radio hits.

Surrender to The Boss

Admittedly, I’m still not a fanatic, and I can’t quite let go of my quest to understand Bruce’s music intellectually. But I’m trying to let it go, and just become one with the sound. And the sound is fantastic.

With that, I’ll leave you with Bono’s speech inducting Bruce into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 25 years on, The Boss’s legend has only grown.