"Adult" Contemporary

Bill Simmons, who can write about his "wife" and "daughter" and how much he hates the WNBA all he wants but never convince anyone he's straight (90210???), dipped into the mailbag again today. There's a letter from one of his fans talking about this clip of Springsteen playing with the Wallflowers. There's all this gushing from the letter writer, followed by his "what's the sports equivalent" question.

Then Simmons answers. Chalk it up to not being closeted AND from Boston, I guess, but I'd never even heard this song before. But here's Bill's take:

The Wallflowers were flying pretty high at the time (looking back, you could even make the case that they were the most underrated mainstream band from the latter half of the '90s), and it's quite possible that Bruce completely derailed young Jakob, who already had enough of an uphill battle as Bob Dylan's son before another music legend hijacked his signature song as he was standing right there. I always thought the Wallflowers should have been bigger than they were. What would have happened if Bruce didn't agree to play the '97 VMAs? We may never know.

Did I miss the Wallflowers along with Norah Jones and Michael Bolton? Are those three even contemporary to each other? I have no frickin' clue...who else was in the Wallflowers? Julian Lennon?