Bruce Springsteen – ‘Streets Of Philadelphia’

25 March 1994

The 1993 movie Philadelphia popped back into the news in June 2022 when its Oscar-winning star, Tom Hanks, agreed with a New York Times journalist that it rightly wouldn’t be made today with its “inauthenticity” of a straight actor playing a gay character. A consideration of this movie both in its 1993 time and its current-day context is outside the scope of this post, though for what it’s worth I agree with Hanks.

Hanks’ scenario inspires a similar question, albeit one of a lesser order: is there a point where a millionaire celebrity portraying a down-on-their-luck civilian tips over from authentic storytelling into inauthentic cosplaying? Applying this question to ‘Streets Of Philadelphia’ by Bruce Springsteen, also an Oscar winner for this movie, it’s fair to allow that Springsteen has a commendable track record of making socially conscious public statements and (though perhaps not on ‘Born In The USA’) of writing sensitively and perceptively about the lives of others in similar first-person narratives such as ‘The River’ and ‘Atlantic City’. Perhaps my qualms spring from the slightly cheesy video (below), where a dishevelled Bruce walks the more litter-strewn quarters of Philly: social realism or poverty tourism? On that question I feel the pull of the latter.

The song itself, with its stark walking beat and sombre synths, is certainly effective. So are Springsteen’s mercurial lyrics, where physically descriptive images like “I was bruised and battered” and “I could hear the blood in my veins” mix the literal with the figurative. But do I like it? I remember back then feeling that this song packed a punch, but listening to it today I find myself wishing the lyrics were a bit angrier and more confrontational. The movie Philadelphia aims to tell an individual story about prejudice and injustice, but the song ‘Streets Of Philadelphia’ meanders more vaguely, trying to be all things to all blue-collar men, leaving all the thematic heavy lifting to its association with the movie and the city of brotherly love. I’m beginning to suspect that even in its time, had I been older and more worldly-wise, I’d have found this song had its own tang of inauthenticity, enough to curdle the whole.