Yesterday, Bruce Springsteen delivered the keynote address at South-By Southwest.  He said at the start, that no agrees on pop anymore.   The last time, he said that happened, was Elvis.  In response, he gave a spirited defense of Woody Guthrie and really the plurality of music.  Today, Springsteen declared, we are living in a “post-authentic world,” in which artists create vital music with tools his generation couldn’t have imagined where “authenticity is a house of mirrors.”  Whether an artist is using a computer or a guitar, “there is no pure way of doing it, there’s just doing it.” What matters is not how the music is created, but the “power and purpose” behind it. This means that the hype, the methods of making music and the story are second to “what you bring when the lights go down.”

Check out, too, how Springsteen rewrites the history of postwar America around the revolutionary presence of Elvis.

For the entire speech see below.