I couldn’t stand Bruce Springsteen when I was younger. It’s all my dad would listen to, morning and night, in the car or the house, while cleaning or gardening. He’d sing along and play air guitar, sometimes air harmonica or saxophone when those instruments showed up on a song. Bruce’s voice was synonymous with my father’s. I took no interest and made no attempt to listen, finding it easier to rebel against the music than it would have been to actually rebel against my dad, which I had no reason to do in the first place. I was too obedient to give into my angst, the purpose and cause of which was undefined. I shoved my earbuds deep into my ears and turned up the sound of my own music to an unhealthy volume.

My neighborhood friends and I spent our time memorizing the lyrics of Rihanna, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls, working for hours on choreography in the yard that we would eventually perform for the other kids in the neighborhood. Anything our parents liked was officially lame; anything that wasn’t on the radio didn’t matter.

After years of refusal, the music finally reached the part of me that wanted to hear it. We were in the car when my dad cut off the conversation to turn up the radio and sing along. The song was “Jungleland” from Born to Run. I actually didn’t start paying attention until halfway through Clarence Clemons’s two-minute sax solo when I realized we were somehow still listening to the same song.

The door opened. These songs had surrounded me my whole life, and only now did I see their depth, that they were for me, about me, and beautiful. I remember listening to “Dancing in the Dark” for what felt like the first time (though it may have been the hundredth). In the second verse, he says, “I check my look in the mirror / I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face.” I had never heard a man express discontent with his appearance before. I thought low self-esteem was reserved for young women like myself and my friends, sometimes it felt like only I knew what it felt like to feel wrong in my own body. Did this man suck in his stomach? Did he compulsively cut his hair and garments on a whim? He opened a window for all of us to watch him, tearing around his bedroom in dissatisfaction. And with that, every bedroom in the world opened up to me. The song sent my mind floating above my whole neighborhood, and the next and the next. Roofs across the city lifted like lids off of pots, allowing me to peer into countless rooms of people pulling at their faces in the mirror. I was not alone.

Springsteen’s reputation for humility precedes him. Photos of him from the early days show him unkempt, like he might smell weird if you got close. I say this with admiration, and I’m thankful for the lesson. He could have easily bought into the style of the ’70s. Elvis, Elton John, and David Bowie also put out records in 1975, the year Bruce released Born to Run. These artists are well known for their attire, like rhinestone birds-of-paradise, and yet Bruce made it through the noise in a T-shirt and jeans. It’s not for lack of means. He speaks so soberly about class issues, it’s hard to remember that we’re talking about a millionaire. He proves that style follows substance, not the other way around—an example that comes as a relief to writers who are ill-suited for the limelight but well-equipped with words. Part of his allure is that he comes to battle without armor, bearing an ungilded truth that can’t be fought.