“Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen

The Boss's commercial peak turns 40.

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Welcome to a new edition of the Best Music of All Time newsletter!

Today’s music pick celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Boss’s biggest commercial and cultural achievement.

Genre: Rock, Pop

Label: Columbia

Release Date: June 4, 1984

Vibe: 🇺🇸

Like its anthemic title track, Born in the U.S.A. remains a bit of a misunderstood beast.

For the first time since Born to Run, Springsteen seemed to be in the business of making a surefire hit. But it didn’t come easily. Legend has it he wrote and recorded somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 to 100 songs, hoping to cull a coherent album out of that material. In the middle of the four years that separated The River and this release, he turned some of those demos into Nebraska, a brilliant but despondent piece of work. Unsurprisingly, he grappled with a deep depression shortly after that.

After regrouping through various therapeutic activities (including getting swole), he polished off the recording in New York and Los Angeles, whittling down the tracklist to 12 songs. Creative starts and stops notwithstanding, he hit a commercial home run. Born in the U.S.A. would yield seven (!) hit singles and sell over 30 million units worldwide. But here’s the misunderstood part: I’ve always thought this LP is a spiritual sequel to Nebraska, albeit with more mainstream production and tighter, more hook-centric songwriting.

He tries to hide it throughout, that’s for sure. Take the album’s most recognizable cut, “Dancing in the Dark.” Most people remember him pulling Courtney Cox out of the crowd and maybe even Clarence Clemons clapping like someone’s tipsy aunt at a wedding reception. What the lively 80s-ness of it all glosses over is the open self-loathing in the lyrics. Early on, he laments: “I ain't nothing but tired/Man, I'm just tired and bored with myself.” Later, he digs deeper, adding, “I check my look in the mirror/I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face.” It’s worth noting that “Dancing” was part of a naked attempt at writing a hit single, a ploy that angered Springsteen. It’s easily one of the most cynical toe-tappers of that decade.

Then there’s the infamous title track, an openly scathing critique of how America treats its disadvantaged. The central character grows up in a dead-end town, presumably chooses between going to prison or getting drafted, serves his country in Vietnam, then comes back and, guess what? The country seems even more intent on casting him aside, treating him more like an inconvenience than a citizen. The last verse is devastating—one of Springsteen’s finest moments as a songwriter.

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary Out by the gas fires of the refinery I'm ten years burnin’ down the road Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go

To this day, no one seems to internalize the cynicism either. Thousands sell out his concerts, enjoying a pseudo-patriotic moment by belting out the chorus in unison. I get it. It’s the Boss. A man of the people. An advocate for the working-class hero. But when he writes a song that fulfills the latter, its true meaning gets lost in the shuffle. Just check out this quote from George F. Will’s piece for the Washington Post, originally published during the last gasps of Summer ‘84:

I have not got a clue about Springsteen's politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: “Born in the U.S.A.!”

To leave it there is to miss the point entirely. Springsteen himself refuted this line of thinking during his run of hugely successful Broadway shows. “I come from a boardwalk town where everything is tinged with just a bit of fraud – so am I,” he admitted. “I’ve never held an honest job in my entire life … never worked nine-to-five … I’ve never seen the inside of a factory, and yet it’s all I’ve ever written about.” Is his growing dissatisfaction with the con at the heart of the American Dream what drove that obsession? Or his deep-rooted sense of longing for a time when that dream could still become a reality?

Even if it’s both of those, no singer/songwriter of his generation did longing better than Springsteen. Whether he’s pining for the freedom of the open road (“Darlington County”), the good old days when he (or the listener) felt on top of the world (“Glory Days”), or lustful late night urges that in his words, leaves bedsheets soaking wet (“I’m On Fire”), he sounds like a man who’s kept up at night by opportunities that, for one reason or another, have slipped either through his or America’s collective fingers. That fixation comes into even sharper focus on the melancholy closer, “My Hometown.” Like the title track, Springsteen brings a bleak tale full circle, hinting at a future where there’s no escaping the inevitable.

Despite its complexity and pessimistic outlook, this LP never has a dull moment, either. Arena-sized synths linger around every corner, Steve Van Zandt’s guitar gets multiple moments to shine, and Max Weinberg’s drums have never sounded more muscular than they do here. It catapulted one of the country’s homegrown heroes to another level of superstardom, a responsibility he took very seriously. There’s a Rolling Stone article from 1984 that tells the story of Springsteen shaming local politicians in Washington state for attempting to roll back legislation that, at the time, required corporations to disclose toxic chemicals employees could be exposed to on the job. “They think that people should come before profit and the community before the corporation,” Bruce exclaimed to the crowd before adding pointedly, “This is your hometown.”

In anecdotes like that one and throughout Born in the U.S.A., he fits the bill as a champion of American values—the kind some still aspire to, anyway.

👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈