Trapped

While watching a couple of videos of tracks from Bruce Springsteen’s upcoming Western Stars release, I scrolled YouTube’s sidebar suggestions of other videos to watch. Among them: “Trapped,” which while not being a Springsteen composition, may be the most ‘80s song in his catalog.

The song was originally by reggae artist Jimmy Cliff, who wrote it in 1972 and watched it do pretty much nothing as a single. The lyrics use the language of a controlling or damaging romantic relationship to express a feeling of oppression in the singer’s culture — a pledge to “someday walk out of here again” could be seen as a promise to drop the bad relationship or throw off the oppression to take the human rights the singer is due.

While touring Europe in 1981, Springsteen bought a tape of Jimmy Cliff songs and liked “Trapped” well enough to try to arrange it for his E Street Band. Cliff’s arrangement had the jaunty rhythm common to reggae but Springsteen slowed the tempo, led with solitary, somber chords from Roy Bittan’s synthesizer and punctuated the song with the kind of anthemic chorus he and the E Streeters were known for. He debuted his arrangement of “Trapped” in England in May of 1981 and it stayed on the set list when the tour returned to the United States.

Then in 1984 a little thing called Born in the U.S.A. happened, and suddenly the devoted but middle-profile fandom that Springsteen had built through the 1970s and early 1980s became mega-stardom. “Trapped” was a popular concert number and made the set list for this tour as well; Springsteen shows had always been more than a simple showcase of his own songs and had their own entertainment modules that never saw an official album release.

In 1985, the famine relief project USA for Africa recorded the single “We Are the World,” featuring dozens of music stars. All money from sales went to famine relief for a variety of sub-Saharan countries, in a ramping up of the Christmas 1984 Band Aid project “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” USA for Africa also wanted to release an album to help raise funds, and several artists donated new or unreleased tracks for it. Springsteen donated an August 1984 recording of “Trapped.” Neither it nor any other donated song was ever released as a single, but “Trapped” hit #1 on what was then called Billboard’s Top Rock Tracks chart and spent 11 weeks in that chart’s top 40. The “official” single release of that time frame, “Glory Days,” spent longer on the Top Rock chart but peaked at #3. Released as a single, of course, it also charted in the regular Top 40.

“Trapped” was the only We Are the World song to gain radio airplay other than the title single and frequently the best-reviewed track on the album. In an interview, Cliff said he appreciated that his song caught Springsteen’s ear and he liked the arrangement — he also liked that through one of his songs, people in difficult situations were getting some help they needed.

The chart position and heavy airplay on album-oriented rock (AOR) stations are things that would probably not happen on radio today. Like many middle-aged people, I am convinced that things were better when I was younger, but in some cases there’s evidence to back me up. The idea that a station’s playlist would include a non-single cover of a decade-old obscurity doesn’t compute at all. None of the various iPod programs that pass for radio station playlists today would have room for it, and no radio station personnel would be given the leeway to play it. That’s if the DJs are actually in the studio when songs were playing instead of being piped in from a station somewhere else or just pre-recorded themselves.

Sure, in terms of music released for purchase these days there’s more variety and diversity than there probably ever has been. But since no one ever gets to hear any of it, the diversity rings a bit hollow. This week circumstances have had me listening to the radio in my truck instead of the podcasts I usually download and play. And so in my own little way, I guess I can also say, “Seems like I’m caught up in your trap again” to the shallow cookie-cutter, lowest common denominator programming on my dial. But I’m headed home tomorrow, so Mr. Podcast can help “teach my eyes to see/beyond these walls in front of me/And someday I’ll walk out of here again.”