You Can't Get Out of Your Skin

Song: Your Own Worst Enemy
Album: Magic
Year: 2007

My initial reaction was that this is a pretty lazy song by B—clearly filler material. But listen, 2007 was a hard year for us all, what with... the economy and... Afghanistan? And any song that starts with jingle bells can't be all bad. (Perhaps an auditory reference to another person of a jollier quality coming to town, hmm?) (Wait, is Santa Bruce Springsteen's worst enemy?!)

This album was well received by critics, but this song isn't even mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for this album, so how good could it be? Your silence speaks volumes, Internet. Perhaps everyone's just feeling burned for accidentally downloading this instead of the hit 1999 Lit song of a similar title.

"Your Own Worst Enemy" at first appears to be about a murder (Fingerprints! Crime scenes! A variety of mirrors!) but the 'Steen wouldn't be so literal, so I think it's actually about hating yourself. Maybe if you'd written a better song, Bruce, you'd have more self esteem. Or maybe it's about President Bush? That's a pretty good guess during this era of work. Nothing "magic" about that guy, am I right, Bruce? Ha ha ha! Oh, it feels good to laugh. Let's never fight again!

Rating: 3 unnecessarily melodramatic string sections out of 10.

This makes me feel: not very sympathetic to his distress. If your worst enemy is Bruce Springsteen (in this case, yourself), that is a pretty great life achievement.

Fun Bruce fact: He's been parodied on Sesame Street with a muppet named Bruce Stringbean singing hits like "Born to Add" and "Barn in the USA". The greatest honour any of us can hope to achieve. (Besides having Bruce Springsteen as your worst enemy—see above.)