Bridge and Tunnel Boys

Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen are among the most well-known and beloved figures in American popular music in the past half-century. The two, friends over many decades, have often been compared. But in this study, cultural historian Jim Cullen systematically traces the uncanny parallels in their lives. Here are two people who were born in the same year-one east of New York City on Long Island, the other west of New York City in suburban New Jersey. Both signed to the same record label. Both released early albums on that label that were hailed yet underperformed in record stores. Both had breakout records in the late seventies, and both ascended to empyrean heights in the mid-eighties. Both married models (and divorced them). And both remained icons well into the 21st century, lionized for their live shows. But there's more here than a set of striking coincidences: Joel and Springsteen are also products of a distinctive New York metropolitan sound-whose hallmark is racial and ethnic integration-that cohered around 1900 and of which both are modern exemplars. Their careers are case studies in how a popular art form unfolded at the tail end of the American century-decades of uncertainty and revival, doubt and hope.