Also, I'm sometimes tempted, as someone who actually kinda likes Springsteen (well, 73-82, anyway), to guess that a part of the thumbs-up that Springsteen's particular brand of arena rock gets may be the way he went about it, particularly in his peak. Yes, as much as I love it, Born to Run is over-the-top. Springsteen was self-consciously going out to craft a rock 'n' roll epic: every second of that album is rooted in everything Springsteen's generation grew up hearing on the radio, but it's through this...well, "epic" lens that one either loves or hate. In my case, it's the one variety of arena-rock that I find endearing; a track like "Jungleland" is what Springsteen and co. heard on the radio, but as rock had been around long enough to have its own mythos by Bruce's day, he did to it what George Lucas did to his ideas for Star Wars after he read Joseph Campbell.