It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that I’m a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. In fact, I listen to his music every day. I have a Spotify playlist with my favourite songs (currently consisting of 123 songs). To me the lyrics of a song are very important. Bruce Springsteen is a fantastic writer and in his vast catalogue there is a song for every mood and they have become the soundtrack of my life.
The first ever Springsteen song I heard was “No surrender”. My six years older sister spun the Born in the USA vinyl in her room, over and over again. It was in 1984, a year before the two legendary Gothenburg shows, the so called “Stadium breakers”, that caused the oscillation that later lead to a major rebuild of the whole venue.
I was only eleven years old but that song caught my attention. By then I didn’t get the lyrics. It was the energy of the song I liked (it charges at you like shot out of a canon) and later I also wanted to know what Springsteen was singing. I had just started learning English and never had the words:
We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school.
been more accurate.
No Surrender is a song about friendship. It’s about living your life and having fun and it makes me happy. It is also a song about not giving up and not to compromise with your own life. Over the years the chorus has worked as a mantra for me. When trying to overcome obstacles the words “no retreat no surrender” have played in my head and made me fight a little bit harder.
P.S as a teacher I’m very humbly aware of how much my pupils learn out of school
Stray Bullet 