User:Zmbro/Born in the U.S.A.

Born in the U.S.A.
Studio album by Bruce Springsteen
Released	June 4, 1984 (1984-06-04)
Recorded	January 1982 – March 1984
Studio	Power Station and Hit Factory (New York City)
Genre	Rock and roll heartland rock pop
Length	46:41
Label	Columbia
Producer	Bruce Springsteen Jon Landau Chuck Plotkin Steven Van Zandt
Bruce Springsteen chronology
Nebraska (1982) Born in the U.S.A. (1984) Live 1975–85 (1986)
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band chronology
The River (1980) Born in the U.S.A. (1984) Live 1975–85 (1986)
Singles from Born in the U.S.A.
"Dancing in the Dark" Released: May 9, 1984 "Cover Me" Released: July 31, 1984 "Born in the U.S.A." Released: October 30, 1984 "I'm on Fire" Released: February 6, 1985 "Glory Days" Released: May 13, 1985 "I'm Goin' Down" Released: August 27, 1985 "My Hometown" Released: November 21, 1985

Born in the U.S.A. is the seventh studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, released on June 4, 1984, by Columbia Records. The album was recorded with the E Street Band and producers Chuck Plotkin and Jon Landau over the course of several years, while Springsteen was also working on his previously released album, Nebraska (1982). It features tighter songs with a brighter, more pop-influenced sound than Springsteen's previous albums, and prominent synthesizer, while its lyrics explore themes of working-class struggles, disillusionment, patriotism, and personal relationships. The cover features a photograph of Springsteen from behind, taken by Annie Leibovitz; it has since become one of the musician's most iconic images.

Frequently cited by critics as one of the greatest albums of all time, Born in the U.S.A. was critically acclaimed upon release and was nominated for Album of the Year at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards. A massive commercial success, it topped the charts in nine countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, producing seven top ten singles in the former region. The album has been certified 17× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling at least 17 million units in the United States, and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide, making it Springsteen's most commercially successful release and one of the best-selling albums of all time. It was respectively ranked number 85 and 86 in Rolling Stone's 2003 and 2012 lists of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", being re-positioned to number 142 in the 2020 iteration.

Background

Following the conclusion of The River Tour in September 1981, Bruce Springsteen rented a ranch in Colts Neck, New Jersey, where he spent time writing new material throughout autumn.

• Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. were written at the same time

• most tracks composed Nebraska, while others appeared on Born in the U.S.A. ("Born in the U.S.A.", "Working on the Highway", and "Downbound Train")
• early versions of "Downbound Train", "Born in the U.S.A", and "Working on the Highway" were on the Nebraska demo cassette. "Darlington County" was first recorded during the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions.

• Springsteen read Ron Kovic's 1976 autobiography Born on the Fourth of July during the River Tour; the book and Springsteen's meeting of various Vietnam War veterans in Los Angeles affected him and prompted the writing of the song "Born in the U.S.A."
• "In 1981, director Paul Schrader asked Springsteen to write music for a proposed film called Born in the U.S.A.; he combined the title with another song he was working on called "Vietnam" and revised the lyrics to create "Born in the U.S.A."

• Springsteen wanted the follow-up to Nebraska to be electric

Production

Recording history

Recording stages: over two years; between 70 to 90 songs

• December 1981 to May 1982 (Nebraska and several U.S.A. tracks);

• Nebraska recordings – January 3
• "Cover Me" was the first song recorded, on January 25, 1982, at The Hit Factory, during a session for the Gary U.S. Bonds record On the Line

• Geffen Records founder David Geffen asked Springsteen to write the song for Donna Summer; Landau convinced him to keep it after hearing the finished recording; Springsteen wrote Summer another song, "Protection"

• April–May; electric Nebraska and tracks from U.S.A.'s first side at the Power Station; Springsteen considered releasing a double album of acoustic and electric songs before deciding to release Nebraska on its own to give the acoustic tracks "greater stature" released in September 1982

• "Born in the U.S.A.", "Darlington County", "Working on the Highway", "Downbound Train", "I'm on Fire", "I'm Goin' Down", "Glory Days",

At this point in the sessions, Springsteen suffered writer's block and was uncomfortable with the large amount of pop tunes recorded; he wanted to writer heavier material, leading to "Bobby Jean" and "No Surrender"

• Following Nebraska's release, Springsteen opted not to tour in support of the album and instead vacationed on a cross-country road trip to California

• January–April 1983; he worked in a new studio constructed by his assistant Mike Batlan in the garage of his new Los Angeles home; yielded the B-sides "Shut Out the Light" and "Johnny Bye-Bye"

or

• November 1982–March 1983; recorded demos over a period of six weeks and added a drum machine to the tracks; songs included "Fugitive's Dream", "Unsatisfied Heart", and "Little Girl Like You"

• like the Nebraska tracks, he felt the new material would not work in a band setting; he considered released another solo acoustic album before scrapping the idea
• during this period, Springsteen made numerous lifestyle changes, including therapy and increasing his physique with a weight-training program
• In April, he departed California and heading back to New York to record with E Street

• May–June 1983; E Street Band at the Hit Factory

• these sessions featured remakes of solo material ("Cynthia" and "My Hometown"), and additional work on tracks that were planned to release as B-sides: "Pink Cadillac", "Car Wash", "TV Movie", "Stand on It"
• "Bobby Jean" July 28

Mixing began in June 1983 by Bob Clearmountain, the mixer of The River's "Hungry Heart"

• by July, Springsteen compiled a proposed track list, under the working title Murder Incorporated
• after over two dozen tracks recorded, Springsteen still felt they did not have an album; recording continued another eight months
• August 1983: Springsteen asked Plotkin to develop a rough mix of the album that included "Born in the U.S.A.", "Glory Days", "My Hometown", "Downbound Train", "Follow That Dream", "Shut Out the Light", "My Love Will Not Let You Down", and "Sugarland"; Landau proposed an alternate mix: "Born in the U.S.A.", "I'm Goin' Down", "Cover Me", "My Hometown", "Bobby Jean", "My Love Will Not Let You Down", "Follow That Dream", "Glory Days", "Protection", "Janey Don't You Lose That Heart", and "I'm on Fire"

• September 1983–March 1984; final recordings, mixing, and mastering

• "No Surrender" (October 25–27) and "Bobby Jean" mixing (October 10)

• "Bobby Jean" "came along late in the sessions as Springsteen, Landau, and coproducer Chuck Plotkin were struggling to agree upon a selection of songs."

• November: "Brothers Under the Bridge"
• the amount of tracks recorded encompassed dozens of different styles, including R&B ("Lion's Den", "Pink Cadillac"), rockabilly ("Stand on It", "Delivery Man"), hard rock ("Murder Incorporated", "My Love Will Not Let You Down"), and country and folk ("This Hard Land", "County Fair", "None but the Brave")
• Springsteen developed an initial track list, which dispensed "Working on the Highway", "I'm on Fire", and "My Hometown" for newer tracks like "My Love Will Not Let You Down" and "None but the Brave"
• Plotkin dismissed the tentative list as "a conceptual mess"; he felt the album should begin with "Born in the U.S.A." and end with "My Hometown", and include "Working on the Highway" and "I'm on Fire"
• "No Surrender" "was a last-minute addition to the record, included at the urging of Steven Van Zandt", who felt it acted a bridge between Springsteen's earlier and current works

• Born in the U.S.A. was decided as the album title by January 1984
• January/February: recorded "Rockaway the Days" and "Man at the Top"
• by February 1984, Landau felt the album was still missing a lead single that would introduce Springsteen to a newfound pop audience; After an initial disagreement about the need for another song, Springsteen came in the next day with "Dancing in the Dark" written entirely. was the last to be recorded, on February 14.

The River's mixer Chuck Plotkin joined Springsteen, Jon Landau, and Steven Van Zandt as co-producer

• Toby Scott engineered the Power Station and Hit Factory sessions
• Springsteen felt disconnected with the E Street Band during the sessions; Nebraska had shaken his artistic vision and he contemplated releasing another acoustic follow-up
• Plotkin's inexperience as a producer resulted in him and Springsteen not talking for several months
• nervous breakdown that haunted him for the next 30 years?

Demos recorded between summer 1982 and spring 1983 included "Betty Jean", "One Love", "Sugarland", "The Klansman", "Delivery Man", "Don't Back Down", "Follow That Dream". a reworking of the 1962 Elvis Presley single by the same name, and "Baby I'm So Cold (Turn the Lights Down Low)", itself a rewrite of Springsteen's "Follow That Dream" with new lyrics."

Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg provided background vocals on "Cover Me" and "No Surrender"

Springsteen continued recording in Los Angeles after Nebraska was released, and reunited with the E Street Band at the Hit Factory in New York in May 1983. Plans were made to release an album titled Murder Incorporated, and then scrapped "because it lacked cohesion", according to Springsteen. Finally, Landau convinced Springsteen that Born in the U.S.A. was complete, after the recording of "Dancing in the Dark". The 12-track release left a large number of unused recordings "in the vaults", with Springsteen fans hoping for a "super box" anniversary collection at some point.

Basic timeline according to Marsh (of course there are more details we can add to flesh this out)

• January 3, 1982 Nebraska demo tape (depending on different sources, it was either recorded that date, or recorded before that and mixed that date)
• Early 1982, recording Gary Bonds' On the Line which Springsteen wrote seven of the songs for
• Early 1982 (January?), recorded "Cover Me" and "Protection" (as above, Heylin says this wasn't the version of "Cover Me" used on BITUSA but other authors do not specify this)
• April 1982, began two weeks of attempts to record Nebraska material with E Street, but everyone was dissatisfied with the results.
• In May began recording other songs to make use of the studio time they had already booked, while they decided what to do about the Nebraska material. Seven or eight ("Cover Me"?) of the recordings used on BITUSA recorded then. There was much energy, and the band was excited about these songs, but the Nebraska compositions meant the most to Springsteen.
• Released Nebraska September 1982 from the original demo songs. - decision to do so is
• Began recording more Nebraska-like demo songs at his home studio in Los Angeles (late 1982?)
• to be continued...

"As Marsh records, the night in May 1982 that the band recorded "Born in the U.S.A." was when "they knew they'd really begun making an album." Over the next few weeks, Springsteen and the E Street Band hit their stride, recording a number of new songs live in the studio, with minimal overdubbing."

According to Himes, Springsteen came across "I'm on Fire" in his notebook and recorded it with Bittan and Weinberg one evening while the rest of the band was on dinner break.

Springsteen struggled on the final track-list due to the large number of songs; he even considered scrapping the entire project; he was convinced by Landau and Plotkin to stick with his original group of songs

• "By [1983], I'd recorded a lot of music (see Disc three of Tracks). But in the end, I circled back to my original groups of songs. There I found a naturalism and aliveness that couldn't be argued with. They weren't exactly what I'd been looking for, but they were what I had."

Van Zandt's departure: "In The Mansion on the Hill, Fred Goodman suggests that Van Zandt's departure from E Street also had something to do with tensions between himself and Jon Landau. As Columbia A&R man Pete Philbin remembers, "Steve and Jon clashed constantly." Goodman writes that Van Zandt was the person the band and crew members turned to as a mediator. His friendship with Springsteen predated his involvement in the band, and he had his ear. That role only served to heighten the tension between him and Landau. Having fought to carve out his own niche as a producer when Mike Appel was the manager, Landau now appeared cool to having Van Zandt as a collaborator, reportedly fighting with him over royalties and production credits."

• departed in June 1982; he felt trapped in the E Street Band; he formed a band called the Disciples of Soul, and wrote his own songs, releasing an album called Men Without Women in October 1982
• "Recording under the name Little Steven, Van Zandt was completing his own album, ambitiously titled Voice of America, and its raw sound and spirit of protest felt at odds with the commercial intent of Springsteen’s latest music. Van Zandt floated the idea of promoting their albums together on a joint tour—I love imagining the response to this proposition—and confessed to feeling a bit undervalued. Sensing a crossroads, and by now well-acquainted with his friend’s stubborn self-reliance, Van Zandt quit the band."
• Springsteen showed a final tracklist to Van Zandt, who hated "Dancing in the Dark" and persuaded him to add "No Surrender"

• Furthermore, no matter what Bruce wanted, his relationship with the band had changed. The sessions called for in the spring and summer of 1983 were the first since 1975 without Steve Van Zandt on rhythm guitar. Even though Steve's presence was more often felt than heard, his catalytic personality had been important component of Springsteen's relationship with the E Street Band, especially since Bruce often communicated with Steve even when he was basically noncommunicative towards everyone else. But that summer Steve was touring Europe in support of his first solo record and returning to New York to record his second album, Voice of America, in another part of the Hit Factory.
• Steve Van Zandt had evolved his way in and out of Bruce's bands before, and this time he left without much discussion. “I felt that at that point I had something really significantly different to say,” Van Zandt said. "Different enough that it would take full. time, it would take leaving. And also, I felt that I had contributed everything I could possibly contribute: We'd recorded live, with no overdubs whatsoever, which is something that I had always worked for right from the beginning… It was just a matter of getting the craftsmanship to the point where you can do that.
• "I was anxious to get on with this new thing, because it was new, you know. I’d dedicated seven years of my life to making that thing happen, and we had accomplished everything that I hoped we could accomplish. It had never occurred to me until then to leave.”
• Steve didn't talk much with the rest of the band about his "plans—"not until it was comfortable," which was after they'd already done a few weeks work without him. And in keeping with the Springsteen organization's penchant for secrecy, his decision wasn't communicated to the outside world until many months later, on the eve of the release of Voice of America and Bruce's own record.
• One result was rumors that Springsteen and Van Zandt were having a feud. … Zandt interpreted the rumors as a sign of public confusion. "I guess people had a tough time figuring out how I could leave at that point, not knowing how I felt, not knowing my own potential. 'Why would he leave?' Of course, it's because I had something to say that no one specifically had ever said before, and how could they relate to that if they've never heard it."
• But if people were confused, it was also because the split however amicable—disrupted the mythology of the E Street Band. Steve Van Zandt wasn't only Bruce's oldest friend in real life; onstage the role he played was the Sidekick. In many of Bruce's yarns, rock and roll functioned on the buddy system, and through them he and Steve and Clarence had achieved a kind of group identity. In real life, of course, being the sidekick of the King of Rock and Roll might mean smothering your own talents or, at best, never getting a chance to discover what they were. As Chuck Plotkin put it in describing his own situation, "Anybody who works with Bruce can become overidentified with him. Your identity becomes subsumed in the identity of someone of Bruce's magnitude. It's difficult to get on with the next project, because the thing that people are interested in is how it was to work with Bruce."
• Steve felt it necessary not just to leave Bruce's band and his production team but even to change his name from Miami Steve to Little Steven and eventually (with his second album) to abandon the soul music on which his earlier image was based. It was anything but the easy way out, but that was how he felt it had to be.

Outtakes

Directly from Kirkpatrick:

The version of "Protection" recorded by the E Street Band is one of many noteworthy non-album tracks to emerge from the U.S.A. sessions, for which Springsteen reportedly wrote anywhere from 50 to 70 songs. These include:

• "My Love Will Not Let You Down"—a rousing pick-up line of a song with some not-so-subtle coercion ("Well hold still darling, hold still for God's sake")
• "County Fair"—a melodic slice of bucolic life
• "Brothers under the Bridge"—a strong-muscled anthem that combines the sentiment of "No Surrender" with echoes of "Born in the U.S.A."
• "None but the Brave"—a variation on the aphoristic sentiment "only the strong survive," with a soaring sax solo from Clarence
• "This Hard Land"—a Guthriesque tune with an "electric Nebraska sound
• "TV Movie" and "Stand on It"—two fast-paced, rockabilly-style songs
• "Shut Out the Light"—a wistful, harmonic song about the return of a man (most likely a veteran, though the song could just as well be about a parolee) welcomed home by his lover and his family
• "Janey Don't You Lose Heart"—a slower, more subtle, and more melodic venture into the territory of "Be True," and the first song the E Street Band recorded with new guitarist Nils Lofgren and resident violinist Soozie Tyrell"
• "Johnny Bye Bye"—the "I'm on Fire" B-side which borrows its two opening lines from Chuck Berry's "Bye Bye Johnny" (Berry got cowriting credits on the song) and serves as an ode to Elvis, with the image of Hank Williams's white Cadillac death car thrown in for good measure
• "Lion's Den"—a horn-infused R&B number in which the singer announces his triumph over a recent heartbreak
• "Pink Cadillac"—a down-tempo, rockabilly rewrite of the Garden of Eden myth and a sustained sexual metaphor; the song nearly made the cut for Born in the U.S.A.
• "Wages of Sin"—the song of a man resigned to keep paying for having wronged his lover

Music and lyrics

Born in the U.S.A. consists of twelve songs.

Genres: Rock and roll, heartland rock, pop

"rock and soul"

Margotin and Guesdon "rock orchestration characterized by slamming guitars, keyboards, ab ass, and drums that hammer out"

• a move toward Adult Contemporary ("Dancing in the Dark" and "My Hometown")
• Springsteen's roots show wit the folk on "Downbound Train" and the rockabilly on "Working on the Highway"

"album filtered the dystopian gloom of the Nebraska songs into the living world of love, work, and the hobbled pursuit of happiness"

Born in the U.S.A. embraced a livelier mainstream sound than on previous Springsteen records, while continuing to explore progressive themes and values.

It "remains the most tightly honed of Springsteen's albums, the songs taut and economical, glistening with pop hooks and burnished with a dynamic Eighties sound".

According to Roger Scott, it was a "defiantly rock 'n' roll" album, while Rolling Stone's Debby Miller noted that while Springsteen incorporated "electronic textures" he "kept as its heart all of the American rock & roll from the early Sixties". While Springsteen's previous album had a stark quality, he maintained that the first half of Born in the U.S.A. was similar, being "written very much like Nebraska – the characters and the stories, the style of writing – except it's just in the rock-band setting."

• Springsteen's characters are married, in their mid-'30s and dealing with parenthood and recession.

Music journalist Matty Karas regarded it as "a quintessential pop album that was also a perfect distillation of the anger and bitterness seething beneath the surface of Reagan-era America."

album was "drenched in the echoing synthesizer typical of mid-1980s rock"

Debby Miller: "music that incorporates new electronic textures while keeping as its heart all of the American rock & roll from the early Sixties"

Gaar: songs that have more upbeat music contrasted with darker lyrics ("Dancing in the Dark", "Born in the U.S.A.", "No Surrender"), looking back into the past with regret ("Bobby Jean", "Glory Days"), songs concerning people struggling with hard times ("Downbound Train"), and celebratory numbers ("Cover Me", "Darlington County", "I'm Goin' Down")

Quote: "My Born in the U.S.A. songs were direct and fun and stealthily carried the undercurrents of Nebraska."

WashPost: "Born in the U.S.A. is a compendium of unmelodic blue-collar angst: the shock and frustration of unemployment and bad jobs ("Born in the U.S.A." and "Working on the Highway"); the crushing costs of attempted or failed romance ("I'm on Fire," "I'm Going Down" and "Downbound Train"); cultural boredom ("Darlington County" and "Dancing in the Dark"); and lost opportunities and the desperation of dreams not just deferred but ended ("No Surrender," "Glory Days," "My Hometown" and "Bobby Jean")."

Pitchfork

• "It is a pristine and precise record whose synth pads, massive drums, and front-and-center vocals represent the defining qualities of the decade’s mainstream rock production."
• "the writing, which blends the detailed narratives of Nebrask with the tighter pop structures of The River, is as thoughtful and emotional as any of his less polished material."
• E Street Band's sound "makes this feel uniquely like pop music." - Bittan's synthesizer ("I'm on Fire", "Dancing in the Dark"), Weinberg's drums ("Glory Days", "Born in the U.S.A.") – "It's a sound that 21st-century bands like the War on Drugs would reinterpret as a kind of psychedelia, and that dance producer Arthur Baker capitalized on at the time with a fascinating series of club remixes."
• "For many of the characters in these songs, down becomes homebase: the direction you’re cautioned to ignore when you’re at the top; the inevitable crash after any high."

Consequence

• "Born in the U.S.A. is, in other words, an optimistic album, even as it is a critical one. It seems to argue that one can both love America and rage against its brokenness."
• "Born in the U.S.A. saw Springsteen transmuting the depressing lamentations into palatable mainstream modes, injecting his songs with verve and humor."

Holden

• "imaginatively coming to grips with the new rhythms and textures of 80's popular music"
• "a dense, metallic sound that embraces more mechnical rhythms and textures, but without severing Mr. Springsteen's ties with with Chuck Berry, Motown, rockabilly, and other traditional rock and roll idioms"
• "Born in the U.S.A. teems with characters and incidents related to a common theme - the decline of small-town working class life in a post-industrial society. Mr. Springsteen's music, however, evokes not only the crushing humiliations and defeats of unemployment and a sense of economic hopelessness, it also suggests the courage and humor working people and laborers can muster in spite of the odds against them. Yet for all the exhilaration and energy in the album's songs about joy rides, high school memories and friendship, Born in the U.S.A. is a sad and serious album about the end of the American dream - of economic hope and security, and of community - for a dwindling segment of our society."
• "Most of the songs use only two or three chords and reiterate abrupt melodic fragments that suggest the bones of more developed folk and country songs."

Hilburn

• "There is a sense of lost opportunities and hard times running through several tunes that recalls the stark emotional landscapes of Nebraska. Yet the characters in these new songs don't seem as desperate as those in Nebraska. One reason is this album's brighter sound. Sections of this album sound downright cheery."
• "adapted some of the mainstream traces of '80s rock, including synthesizer and a peppy, almost aerobic-conscious beat"

Side one

"Born in the U.S.A." is an energetic, rock and roll song, driven by synthesizer and pounding drums. A protest song, the track dissects the cruel mistreatment of Vietnam veterans upon their return home after the war. The song's message is widely regarded as misunderstood, as many Americans, including president Ronald Reagan, mistook the song for a patriotic anthem; the song's supposed "jingoism" was noted by several commentators. Margotin and Guesdon note the juxtaposition of the verses, which express "the somber reality of a soldier", with the chorus, which "loudly and proudly proclaims the glory of American civilization". AllMusic's Mike DeGayne argued that while the song would have been effective as an acoustic ballad, similar to "Atlantic City" or "My Hometown", "it's the fervor and the might of Springsteen in front of a bombastic array of guitar and drums that help to drive his message home". In Songs, Springsteen said the track "more or less stood by itself" compared to the rest of the album.

"Cover Me" is a straightforward rock song with elements of pop, disco and funk. Lyrically, it describes a love story wherein the narrator, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, pleas for his lover to stay with him and protect him from the outside world. "Darlington County" is an upbeat rock song that some critics compared to the music of Creedence Clearwater Revival. It tells the story of two New York friends who embark on a road trip. Upon their arrival in the titular Darlington, South Carolina, they plan to find jobs but instead spend their time with women. Kirkpatrick said the song "steeped in countrified blue-collarism". "Working on the Highway" is a rockabilly track that tells the story of a highway worker who runs away to Florida with his girlfriend against her father's wishes. When he gets there, he gets arrested and sentenced to forced labor. Originally "Child Bride" from the Nebraska demo tape, the final track retains the same story and several lines from the original lyrics.

"Downbound Train" is a minimalist rock ballad featuring synthesizer. Described as the album's saddest song, the lyrics include themes of disillusionment and loss. It follows a man has lost everything: after losing his job at the lumberyard, his wife leaves him, after which he struggles to make a living working at a car wash. Distressed, he dreams of his now ex-wife. The song's narrator is similar to other tracks on Nebraska and "Stolen Car" from The River (1980). "Downbound Train" originated from a Nebraska demo called "Son You May Kiss the Bride".

"I'm on Fire" is a minimalist ballad featuring only synths, picked guitar, and brushed drums. Musically inspired by Johnny Cash,

• "the tense, ticking confession of a man in heat"
• "a two-and-a-half-minute ode to adulterous lust."
• "Springsteen sings in asonorous, Cash-like voice. The music is understated—Bittan's synth lines are restrained and Weinberg's drumming like the ticking of a clock—and the words are what give the song its heat."
• "an obsessive (and arguably one-sided) expression of lust made to sound like a straight-forward bedroom ballad."
• the heroine expresses an uncontrollable desire for the narrator
• "The track closes side one, leaving a hushed, solemn interlude in the center of a mostly upbeat, ebullient album. It seems symbolic, both structurally and musically, as if marking a turning point in Springsteen’s career from middle-America heartland rocker to synth- and dance-influenced mainstream star."

Side two

"No Surrender"

• "an anthem of friendship and youth and never giving up"
• "a statement—maybe an overstatement—of youthful defiance with allusions to blood brotherhood and forced warlike metaphors ("Like soldiers in the winter's night with a vow to defend/No retreat no surrender") and its oft-quoted insistence that "We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school."
• "a call to freedom, rock music, and adolescence"
• 1950s/60s style rock; "dense, rich, and heavy sound"
• "an upbeat song of youth"

"Bobby Jean"

• "memorializes a lost relationship"
• "a rollicking 4/4 ballad whose highlight is the plaintive sax solo from Clarence Clemons which brings the song to a close."
• like "No Surrender", the song is believed to be a tribute to Steven Van Zandt and his friendship with Springsteen

• thought to be a tribute to Van Zandt, who left the band as the album was being finalized. It's described as "classic Springsteen: the lyrics may put a lump in your throat, but the music says, Walk tall or don't walk at all."

• "more overtly a statement of good luck and goodbye"; "the title character's name is vaguely feminine, her/his name could stand in for the name of any close friend that the singer has known "ever since we were sixteen.""
• rock and roll; accented rhythm and near-dance groove
• "a song about youthful friendship"
• the narrator visits the title character in another city, causing his memories of them to come back in a nostalgic tone
• "Like all his writing about friendship, “Bobby Jean” flirts with the language of love songs—the gender is intentionally ambiguous—and, paired with a bittersweet piano melody, the sentiment is so heartbroken and earnest that it feels almost childlike."
• first track on the album to feature a saxophone solo by Clemons

"I'm Goin' Down"

• "a deceptively sad tale of faded love despite the bouncing rhythm"
• "profiles a couple on the verge of break-up and it comes across as a playful flirtation."
• a love story that takes place on a road trip; the narrator and his girlfriend have a fight, after which the former goes "down, down, down"; years later, the heroine's former passion is lost and turned to indifference
• rock sound

"Glory Days"

• "it is in fact a song in opposition to nostalgia. Its protagonist pities the high-school heroes — the baseball player, the beauty queen — whose adulthood has failed to measure up, and who can fill the hole only with memories. Springsteen's great advantage is that he has found a way to grow up alongside his characters."
• "a tale of lost youth and adult resignation and acceptance of where you've ended up: high school baseball stars, marriages that didn't quite work out, and sitting around talking about the good ol' times."
• "With its descriptions of the one-time high school baseball star sitting at a bar remembering his (long-gone) glory days, as well as the once-beautiful girl who is now a divorcée raising two kids, the song touches upon the "best years of our lives" cliché that, nevertheless, rang true to many of Springsteen's listeners. It's not a happy song." ... "Yet the song is a happy song. From the let's-get-this-party-started guitar intro to the faded beauty's ability to deal with her lost direction inlife—"when she feels like crying/she starts laughing"—the song emerges as a communal statement of endurance."
• pop song

• "covers the melancholy of middle age at the heart of simple-minded nostalgia pits it against music that openly panders to nostalgists in love with old-school rock."
• based on the true story of Springsteen meeting an old friend at a bar who could have been a professional baseball player in 1973 (first verse); second verse features a now-divorced heroine who, back in high school, "could turn all the boys' heads" – the two reflect on the "old times" with nostalgia and sadness; third verse occurs in the present – "there's a bar, alcohol, stories of irony and disappointment"
• rock, energetic piece

"Dancing in the Dark"

• "an anguished song of small-town restlessness and discontent that uses a pulsing dance rock style to evoke erotic and spiritual dreams near to eruption from the pressures of boredom and sexual frustration. Synthesized horns inject an undertone of western movie wistfulness."
• "The song is one of the more frank examinations of the creative process. It shows the songwriter struggling not just with writer's block but also with the very nature of being a public performer. The singer is bored with himself, he can't stand the sight of himself in the mirror, and he feels confined by the walls around him. He bids a nearby love to help provide the creative "spark" he needs."
• "an infectious synth-pop tune about self-hatred"
• "an immense physical and emotional weariness"; the narrator is frustrated with his life and wants to free himself from his daily routine and find a spark that reignites his imagination; for the moment, the narrator and his partner are "living without a purpose, impervious to the passing of time", or "dancing in the dark"
• pop song; music is "upbeat, lively, and danceable", primarily led by synthesizer; Clemons ends the song with a jazzy saxophone solo
• led by synthesizer
• "a pure 80's synth pop song"

"My Hometown"

• "a gentle winding-down, mingling regret and resolution, dusting off the broken dreams and promising a new start."
• "somber, low-key"... "four verses that describe the narrator's life and the small town in which he lives. In the first verse, he remembers being eight years old and driving through town with his father, who says, "This is your hometown." The second verse takes the narrator to high school, and he recalls racial tensions and a specific incident of violence. In the third verse he talks about the town's current state of decline with the closing of a textile mill, and in the fourth he contemplates packing up and leaving, even as he reenacts his father's car trip through town with his own son and repeats, "This is your hometown." ... "My Hometown" marks yet another development in his ongoing examination of the world of his youth. Where his early characters wanted desperately to get out, this 35-year-old narrator is ambivalent about leaving. ... Unlike the often-inflated, poetic descriptions of similar material in earlier songs, the lyrics for "My Hometown" are full of specifics, the language deliberately plain. The song does not offer a solution and doesn't even come to a clear conclusion, and its subtly rhythmic, simple construction has a flow that suggests continuity. Even the music doesn't end, it just fades out."
• "The first verse, based on Springsteen's memories of driving with his father throughtown, is surprisingly sentimental given the songwriter's treatment of fathers from "Adam Raised a Cain" to "Independence Day" to "My Father's House." As the father drives his eight-year-old son through town, he "tousles" his son's hair and says "Son take a good look around/This is your hometown." "In the song's final verse, the singer (now grown) finds himself telling the same thing to his own son as they drive through town. But with the middle verses referring to an incident of racial violence in 1965 and then the "whitewashed windows and vacant stores" on Main Street and the textile mill that's closing, the singer's message to his son is no longer a simple statement of pride (as his father's had been) but advice to look around and remember something even as it's fading away."
• synthesizer dominates the arrangement
• the song was based on Springsteen's personal experiences in his own hometown growing up in the 1960s: racial tensions, riots, and abandonment
• "“My Hometown”, meanwhile, returns to the social issues that were more of a focal point on the first side of Born in the U.S.A.. The low-tempo, synth-driven song is one of his most effective and moving explorations of broken American politics, both incisive and melancholy. The refrain, “This is my hometown,” changes meaning as the song shifts its focus from adolescence to working-class life, racial violence, and post-industrial economic strife. It captures what “Born in the U.S.A.” failed to: the tragedy of the American dream, the brutality and injustice that is fundamental to American citizenship, and the complicated, intractable love for one’s home that still manages to take root in the midst of it all."
• folk ballad

Artwork

The cover photograph for Born in the U.S.A. was taken by the rock photographer Annie Leibovitz, a former photographer for Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair magazines. In the photo, Springsteen stands with his back to the camera against the stripes of an American flag. He is wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, with a red baseball cap tucked into his right back pocket. Springsteen said the flag was included on the cover because the first track was called "Born in the U.S.A." and the record's overarching theme reflected his writing of the past six or seven years. The cover sparked outrage; some commentators believed Springsteen was urinating on the flag, which Springsteen assured was inaccurate, telling Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone that "the picture of my ass looked better than the picture of my face" and there was no "secret message"

the inside of the sleeve contained a black-and-white photograph of Springsteen, another of him with the E Street Band, and song lyrics

the sleeve included Springsteen's farewell words to Van Zandt written in Italian: Buon viaggio, mia fratello, Little Steven ("Safe travels, my brother, Little Steven")

According to political writer Peter Dreier, the music's "pop-oriented" sound and the marketing of Springsteen as "a heavily muscled rocker with an album cover featuring a giant US flag, may have overshadowed the album's radical politics."

best album covers of all time (31)

Release and promotion

Columbia Records released Born in the U.S.A. on June 4, 1984. The album was the first compact disc manufactured in the United States for commercial release, and was manufactured by CBS (Columbia's international distributor) and Sony Music at its newly-opened plant in Terre Haute, Indiana in September; Columbia's CDs were previously manufactured in Japan.

The album debuted at number nine on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 Albums chart during the week of June 23, 1984, topping the chart two weeks later on July 7, staying at number one for seven weeks; it remained on the chart for 143 weeks. It was also a commercial success in Europe and Oceania; in the United Kingdom the album entered at number two on June 16, and after thirty-four weeks, on February 16, 1985, it reached number one and topped the chart for five non consecutive weeks; it was present on the chart for 135 weeks. It also topped the album charts in Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. The album reached number two in France, Italy, Spain, and on the European Top 100 Albums chart. It also reached number six in Japan and thirty-seven in Belgium Wallonia. Born in the U.S.A. was the best-selling album of 1985 and of Springsteen's career.

Born in the U.S.A. is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with worldwide sales of over 30 million copies. It was certified three times platinum by the BPI on July 25, 1985, denoting shipments of 900,000 units in the UK. After the advent of the North American Nielsen SoundScan tracking system in 1991, the album sold an additional 1,463,000 copies, and on April 19, 1995, it was certified seventeen times platinum by the RIAA for shipments of 17 million copies in the US.

At the 27th Annual Grammy Awards in 1985, Born in the U.S.A. was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, while "Dancing in the Dark" was nominated for Record of the Year and won the award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, Male. "Born in the U.S.A." was nominated for Record of the Year at the following year's ceremony.

Singles

By 1984, the music industry had become reliant on singles and music videos for success following the rise of MTV in the U.S. The massive success of Michael Jackson's Thriller (1982) also ensured record labels wanted to turn albums into "mega-albums". The music industry historian Steve Kropper stated that Thriller created a "video-driven blueprint" for keeping an album high in the charts for at least an entire year. Springsteen and Landau had only envisioned one or two singles from Born in the U.S.A., but Columbia felt the album contained "at least half a dozen" possible singles, each accompanied by dance remixes and music videos to broaden airplay, both on the radio and in clubs. According to Dolan, the initial singles were intended to attract new fans to Springsteen, while the later ones continued promoting the album and tour. Springsteen entrusted the strategy to Columbia, who informed him to "go out and do what you do great". Pitchfork's Sam Sodomsky later wrote: "MTV had evolved into a legitimate arm of the music industry, and Springsteen's new look [muscular with a bandana] helped him gain traction in an image-centric medium."

Born in the U.S.A. was supported by a record-tying seven top ten singles. The first, "Dancing in the Dark" with "Pink Cadillac" on the B-side, was released on May 9, 1984. It peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent 21 weeks on the chart. Elsewhere, it topped the singles charts in Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and also reached number four in the U.K. The 12" single featured three dance remixes of "Dancing in the Dark" by the producer Arthur Baker; it was the best-selling 12" single of the year. "Cover Me", featuring a 1981 live recording of Tom Waits' "Jersey Girl" as the B-side, was released as the second single on July 31. It spent 18 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching number seven, as well as number two on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. "Born in the U.S.A.", backed by "Shut Out the Light", was issued as the third single on October 30. It spent 17 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching number nine. Elsewhere, it topped the charts in Ireland and New Zealand, and peaked at number two in Australia, and number five in the U.K. A dance remix by Baker appeared on a 12" single in January 1985.

"I'm on Fire", backed by "Johnny Bye Bye", was released as the fourth single on February 6, 1985. It peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained on the chart for 20 weeks. "Glory Days" followed on May 13, with "Stand On It" as the B-side. It spent 18 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number five. The sixth single, "I'm Goin' Down", was issued on August 27, backed by "Janey, Don't You Lose Heart". It reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100, and also charted in Sweden and Italy. The seventh and final single, "My Hometown", was released on November 21, with a 1975 live recording of the Christmas song "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" as the B-side. It reached numbers six and nine in the U.S. and the U.K., respectively.

Music videos

Five of the album's seven singles were supported with music videos. The video for "Dancing in the Dark", Springsteen's first true music video, depicts a live performance of the song by Springsteen and the E Street Band. Directed by Brian De Palma, it was shot at the St. Paul Civic Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota on June 28 and 29, 1984. In the video, Springsteen pulls a young fan, played by the then-unknown actress Courteney Cox, on stage to dance; Springsteen recreated the bit frequently with young female fans throughout the tour. De Palma's video introduced Springsteen to the MTV generation and helped Springsteen reach the audience he had always wanted since his signing to Columbia in 1972. The filmmaker John Sayles directed the videos for "Born in the U.S.A.", "I'm on Fire", and "Glory Days". For the title track, Sayles interspersed concert footage of Springsteen singing the song with footage of small-town America.

"I'm on Fire" was Springsteen's first narrative video. It starred Springsteen himself as an auto mechanic captivated by a young woman in a white dress. The video won the award for Best Male Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1985. The video for "Glory Days" starred Springsteen as the song's titular baseball player, working on a construction site and practicing baseball pitches alone, reflecting on his "glory days". It transitions to a performance of the song at a club with the E Street Band, featuring both Steven Van Zandt and replacement guitarist Nils Lofgren, and new backing vocalist Patti Scialfa. The video ends with Springsteen's character playing a game of catch with his son until his wife, played by Springsteen's first wife Julianne Phillips, picks them up. The video for "My Hometown" depicts a live performance of the song by Springsteen and the E Street Band. It was directed by Arthur Rosato and was shot towards the end of the tour.

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Initial reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
Christgau's Record Guide	A+
Los Angeles Times
Record Mirror
Rolling Stone
Saturday Review
Smash Hits	8/10
Sounds

Born in the U.S.A. was lauded by many critics, while also generating some controversy.

criticized use of same themes as prior albums; Harrington: "The problem is that Springsteen's taken us down these mean sidestreets and through these badlands all too often since 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town."

Some described Born in the U.S.A. as a more accessible version of Nebraska, one that is more easily digestible for a wider audience.

Debby Miller, Rolling Stone

• said it was as well thought-out as Nebraska, but with more sophistication and spirit. "While the album finds its center in [its] cheering rock songs", it's the final two songs on either side that give it an "extraordinary depth". "Springsteen has always been able to tell a story better than he can write a hook," she says, "and these lyrics are way beyond anything anybody else is writing". She sees Springsteen creating "such a vivid sense of these characters" by "[giving] them voices a playwright would be proud of".
• noted presence of humor

Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times

• "a richly absorbing and highly accessible album that exposes the shallow, contrived nature of most mainstream rock these days"
• "Blessed with deep-rooted passion and imagination, the LP serves equally well as an enticing introduction to Springsteen's work or as the stirring next chapter for those who have been following Springsteen's career."

In July 1984, writing in Rolling Stone, Dave Marsh deemed it to be the artist's most accessible listen since Born to Run, managing to incorporate "techno-pop elements without succumbing to the genre's banalities".

Charles Shaar Murray, NME

• "No-one's going to get high on fantasy or rebellion from listening to Born In The USA. There are no moments of delirious abandon here; the music is as dry and contracted as the state of mind it describes."
• "It is very rare to see an artist take a clearcut choice between selling his audience the same old bullshit that he knows they love, and telling them the truth even if it means letting go of stuff that sells."
• "By abandoning all that 'rebel triumphant' blabber'n smoke, Bruce Springsteen displays the kind of moral and artistic integrity that rock music rarely shows any more. The power of Born In The USA is less flashy and less intoxicating, but it is far more real than the power of Springsteen's early work; this is the power of an artist telling the truth."

Sandy Robertson, Sounds

• "a bloody, unbowed, magnificent album"
• "if Broooose is no longer innovating, at least he's polishing and perfecting his craft. If you let notions of 'classics' be replaced by objectivity then this might be the best Springsteen album ever."
• "Born In The USA is a killer-diller, a record that all but the most sullen outsiders will warm to as well as the diehards. 'Dancing In The Dark' shows it most: Bruce has been listening to the radio, and now he's made a record to fit there."

Richard Williams, The Times

• "he continues his examinations of individuals living in the margins of the Great Society, those for whom the promises of capitalism are never kept, but who find the warmth of a promise that will be broken better than no promise at all. Some will find Springsteen's obsession predictable to the point of banality; others will continue to believe that he finds enough new angles in his material to make it sound like a life's work."
• "the E Street Band, the sextet whose mastery of conventional rock forms is unequalled"
• closer in mood to Darkness

John Swenson of Saturday Review praised the disciplined writing style and Springsteen for "championing traditional rock values at a time when few newer bands show interest in such a direction".

Cash Box

• "Immediate radio acceptance and a strong consumer reception can be expected as "The Boss" releases this long awaited collection of personal reflections about life in America. “Dancing in the Dark"'s initial success as the debut single proves that this should be the most successful release yet from Springsteen and his E Street Band. AOR will have a field day with every cut as tunes like "Glory Days" and "My Hometown" continue to demonstrate Springsteen’s special ability to convey the lyrical message of each song."

Record Mirror

• "Three songs glorifying sexual harassment, three about growing up in the good ol' US and a couple about how the guys go out and knock their stupid heads together on a Friday night."
• "Needless to say, Bruce thinks this is all just great and belts out the aforementioned pearls of wisdom with his customary gusto. Springsteen and his excellent band have got it all off pat by now and I can see why the yanks love him, but show me a Brit into Bruce and I'll show you a misguided wally."

Stephen Holden, The New York Times

• "includes rowdy party numbers as well as the bleak monologues of working-class losers that dominated Mr. Springsteen's recent work, offers Mr. Springsteen's most comprehensive vision of American life to date."
• "[Springsteen] is one of a very small number of rock performers who uses rock to express an ongoing epic vision of this country, individual social roots and the possibility of heroic self-creation."
• "He has transfused rock and roll and social realism into one another, and the compassion and the surging brawn of his music make his very despairing vision of American life into a kind of celebration."

Richard Harrington, The Washington Post

• "Springsteen has become a brooding, boorish visionary, with no respite of working class advocacy or the resilient spirit of youth."
• "Springsteen's love songs remain unconvincing, unresolved. They never seem to be about real relationships, but more often about high school fantasies that seem puerile compared to mature missives from artists as disparate as Elvis Costello and the Womacks."
• "Springsteen has abandoned the wordpower of his earlier work for a chilling austerity, turning from his frantic city imagery and sinewy verse to terse country/folk couplets a la Guthrie. He's also dropped the characterizations that made his songs memorable."
• "Springsteen's music, once torrential, has turned into a cold drizzle that's deadly serious, but also deadly dull."

In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau welcomed the absence of dejected themes of nostalgia and losers, along with the tougher lyrics, a sense of humor, and an upbeat worldview. It delivered "what teenagers loved about rock and roll", namely "that it just plain sounded good".

Born in the U.S.A. was voted the best album of the year in the 1984 Pazz & Jop critics poll. Christgau, the poll's creator, also ranked it number one on his list, and in 1990 named it the ninth-best album of the 1980s. NME, in their end-of-the-year list, placed it at number two, behind Bobby Womack's The Poet II.

Rolling Stone: Artist of the Year, Band of the Year, Album of the Year, Single of the Year ("Dancing in the Dark") and Music Video of the Year (ditto) to Springsteen and the E Street Band.

Tour

Main article: Born in the U.S.A. Tour

• rehearsals for the tour began in early May 1984, E Street had not performed together in two and a half years
• lineup was Bittan, Clemons, Tallent, Federici, and Weinberg; Nils Lofgren replaced Van Zandt as a second guitarist
• four days before the tour began, Springsteen hired Patti Scialfa as a backing vocalist

Springsteen reworked his image to be "highly masculinized" for the tour; he wore sleeveless shirts to show off his new muscular physique, was clean-shaven, and held his curly hair up with a bandana

June 29, 1984 to October 2, 1985; 156 concerts

• tour began in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where the video for "Dancing in the Dark" was filmed

Springsteen had over sixty unperformed songs in his repertoire since the end of the last tour

• the first set typically consisted of songs from older material (including Nebraska), with "Born in the U.S.A." or "Thunder Road" (1975) often starting the shows
• the second set typically included songs written after Nebraska's release, such as "Dancing in the Dark", "No Surrender", and "Bobby Jean"

Conservative political commentator George Will attended the show in Largo, Maryland on August 25; he published a column about Springsteen the following month, wherein he praised the artist's work ethic and discussed his "presumed patriotism" with the usage of the phrase "born in the U.S.A.";

• less than a week after the column's publishing, president Ronald Reagan, in the middle of his reelection campaign, praised Springsteen's patriotism during a campaign rally in Hammonton, New Jersey. Springsteen himself dismissively responded to Reagan's comments two days later during a show in Pittsburgh

Kirkpatrick

• American tour through January 1985
• World tour from late March to July; Australia, Japan, the U.K., and Europe

• Springsteen married his first wife Julianne Phillips in May, between the Oceania and European legs
• European leg drew large crowds, including a 100,000 attendance in Ireland, and three sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium in London

• final U.S. leg from August to October 2

The tour's massive success led to the creation of Springsteen's first live album, Live 1975–85, released in November 1986.

Legacy

"Born in the U.S.A. brought Springsteen unimaginable success as a recording and performing artist." made him a superstar

"'Born In the U.S.A.' changed my life and gave me my biggest audience. It forced me to question the way I presented my music and made me think harder about what I was doing." – Songs

"I put a lot of pressure on myself over a long period of time to reproduce the intensity of Nebraska on Born in the U.S.A. I never got it. But 'Born in the U.S.A.' is probably one of my five or six best songs, and there was something about the grab-bag nature of the rest of the album that probably made it one of my purest pop records."

"Born In the U.S.A. changed my life, gave me my largest audience, forced me to think harder about the way I presented my music, and set me briefly at the center of the pop world."

Nevertheless, Springsteen felt reservations about the album as a whole. He wrote in Songs that the title track "more or less stood by itself" and that "the rest of the album contains a group of songs about which I've always had some ambivalence". He further said: "I wanted to take [Nebraska] and electrify it. But it really didn't flesh out like I had hoped it would."

Kirkpatrick: "Today, the album remains a litmus test among fans." ... "the album is often shrugged off by hardcore fans who remember with a touch of embarrassment the muscular patriotism—real or perceived—of the title song, the fashion faux pas (bandana headbands, jean vest over leather jacket), the 18 months of nonstop airplay on Top 40 radio that had pastel-wearing girls singing Springsteen in school hallways. In many ways, the album is very much a time capsule of the 1980s music scene that favored jingly pop songs, and in which a "grab-bag" album like Born in the U.S.A. would become a blockbuster success. But regardless of one's viewpoint, the album became the proverbial lion in the road—one that Springsteen himself would have to confront as he planned the next step in his career.

"But the [title] track, like the album, is anything but a celebration of the Stars and Stripes, and the struggle to make that clear has been a central part of the album's legacy."

Ryan Leas, Stereogum: "one of the defining records of the '80s"

old stuff

Although Springsteen had been a well-known star before its release, Larry Rodgers wrote in the Arizona Republic that "it was not until he hit the gym to get buffed up and showed off his rear end in Annie Leibovitz's famous cover photo for Born in the U.S.A. that he became an American pop icon", touching off a wave of "Bossmania", as author Chris Smith called it. In his book A Race of Singers – Whitman's Working-Class Hero From Guthrie to Springsteen, Bryan K. Garman suggested that this new image helped Springsteen popularize his persona on a new scale, while tying him to certain political and socio-cultural issues, at a time when Ronald Reagan was promoting prosperity and US global influence "within a decidedly masculine framework." The album helped popularize American heartland rock, boosting the profiles of artists such as John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, and Bob Seger.

As Born in the U.S.A. became a massive commercial success, Springsteen expressed mixed feelings about his growing fame, saying that being rich "doesn't make living easier, but it does make certain aspects of your life easier". "There were moments where it was very confusing", he added, "I never felt like I ever played a note for the money. I think if I did, people would know, and they'd throw you out of the joint".

Springsteen also expressed mixed feelings about the album itself, believing that Nebraska contains some of his strongest writing. While the title track on Born in the U.S.A. "more or less stood by itself", he declared, he called the album a "grab-bag", and "a group of songs about which I've always had some ambivalence." He acknowledged the powerful effect it had on his career, delivering his largest audience. "It forced me to question the way I presented my music and made me think harder about what I was doing," he said. The title track was widely misunderstood. According to Greg Kot and Parker Molloy, the chorus of the song felt like a patriotic anthem, but this was contradicted by the lyrics' depiction of the difficulties and marginalization returning working-class Vietnam veterans had to face. Written during the early 1980s recession in the United States, "the crestfallen verses mock the empty slogan in the chorus". It "was wilfully misinterpreted by many on the American Right" who used it during rallies, campaign events, and victory speeches.

Landau said that there were no plans for the band to celebrate the album's thirtieth anniversary with a deluxe reissue box set in the manner of previous Springsteen albums. "At least not yet," he added. A full album live performance DVD titled Born in the U.S.A. Live: London 2013 was released exclusively through Amazon on January 14, 2014, along with High Hopes.

Retrospective reviews

Professional ratings

Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Chicago Tribune
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music
MusicHound Rock	4/5
Pitchfork	10/10
Q
The Rolling Stone Album Guide

one of Springsteen's best records

Sam Sodomsky, Pitchfork

• called it "the bold, brilliant, and misunderstood apex of Bruce Springsteen's imperial era."
• "But while the recordings span several years of sessions, plagued with interpersonal struggle and self-doubt, bouncing between genre and mood, built on creative compromise and commercial aspiration, overexposed and eternally misunderstood, there’s really not a dull moment. With its grab-bag nature, the whole thing explodes like an encore run—when the lights are up and there’s nothing left to play but the hits; when fatigue converts into a kind of euphoria and the energy builds until it seems a little dangerous."

Writing retrospectively in The Telegraph, Neil McCormick declared it to be "an album of glittering paradoxes" which "manages to be both angry and celebratory, often in the same song".

BBC Music

• "at no point does it become as stupid, or as complex, as track 1"

New York Post <-- bad source?

Paste

• "This is Springsteen’s finest moment. Here are his strongest pop hooks, his most mature lyrics, his most complete vision. At long last, he reconciled the romanticism of his 1973-77 work with the darkness of his 1978-82 work. At long last, he mastered the recording studio to make it an aid to his vision rather than an obstacle, allowing him to finally be as powerful in the studio as he always had been on stage. At long last, he recognized that comedy could be as revealing of human nature as drama, and he allowed his funny songs to stand side by side with his serious ones. At long last, he resolved his ambivalence about pop stardom and went for it with the catchiest choruses, biggest guitar riffs and most evangelical vocals he could muster.—Geoffrey Himes"

William Ruhlmann, AllMusic (interpreted the album as an apotheosis for Springsteen's reoccurring characters)

• "Bruce Springsteen had become increasingly downcast as a songwriter during his recording career, and his pessimism bottomed out with Nebraska. But Born in the U.S.A., his popular triumph, which threw off seven Top Ten hits and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, trafficked in much the same struggle, albeit set to galloping rhythms and set off by chiming guitars. That the witless wonders of the Reagan regime attempted to co-opt the title track as an election-year campaign song wasn't so surprising: the verses described the disenfranchisement of a lower-class Vietnam vet, and the chorus was intended to be angry, but it came off as anthemic. Then, too, Springsteen had softened his message with nostalgia and sentimentality, and those are always crowd-pleasers. "Glory Days" may have employed Springsteen's trademark disaffection, yet it came across as a couch potato's drunken lament. But more than anything else, Born in the U.S.A. marked the first time that Springsteen's characters really seemed to relish the fight and to have something to fight for. They were not defeated ("No Surrender"), and they had friendship ("Bobby Jean") and family ("My Hometown") to defend. The restless hero of "Dancing in the Dark" even pledged himself in the face of futility, and for Springsteen, that was a step. The "romantic young boys" of his first two albums, chastened by "the working life" encountered on his third, fourth, and fifth albums and having faced the despair of his sixth, were still alive on this, his seventh, with their sense of humor and their determination intact. Born in the U.S.A. was their apotheosis, the place where they renewed their commitment and where Springsteen remembered that he was a rock & roll star, which is how a vastly increased public was happy to treat him."

According to Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), while Born in the U.S.A. may have seemed more conservative than Springsteen's previous work, it showed him evolving on what was his "most rhythmically propulsive, vocally incisive, lyrically balanced, and commercially undeniable album".

In a retrospective review for Q magazine Richard Williams gave it two stars out of five, criticizing Springsteen's exaggeration of his usual characters and themes in a deliberate attempt at commercial success. He accused the singer of trying to "exploit the American flag" and "to bury the anti-war message of Born In The USA beneath an impenetrable layer of clenched-fist bombast". This was, in his view, "downright irresponsible."

Rankings

Born in the U.S.A. has appeared on several best-of lists. In 1987, Born in the U.S.A. was voted the fifth greatest rock album of all time in Paul Gambaccini's Critic's Choice poll of 81 critics, writers, and radio broadcasters. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Born in the U.S.A. number 85 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, 86 in a 2012 revised list, and 142 in a 2020 revised list. In 2013, it was named the 428th greatest album in a similar list published by NME. The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012. The same year, Paste magazine ranked it the fourth best album of the 1980s. In 2015, Ultimate Classic Rock included it on a list compiling the best rock albums of the 1980s.

lists

Telegraph: #5: "Born In The USA remains the most tightly honed of Springsteen's albums, the songs taut and economical, glistening with pop hooks and burnished with a dynamic Eighties sound. It successfully synthesises the two disparate strands of The River and comes up with something that manages to be both angry and celebratory, often in the same song. It is an album of glittering paradoxes, not least in the rage underpinning a sing-along title anthem that was wilfully misinterpreted by many on the American Right. Romance (Cover Me), defeat (Downbound Train), stoicism (Working On The Highway), lust (I'm On Fire), bittersweet nostalgia (Bobby Jean), frustration and longing (Dancing in The Dark) and a heart-swelling acceptance of personal identity (My Hometown), all wrapped up with slick pop production."

NME: #4: "Bruce's best-selling album, 'Born in the USA', is also his most misunderstood, and has remained a weapon in the culture wars since its release in 1984. It should be more than obvious by now – if you just listen to the lyrics, or one of Springsteen's many public statements – that the title track is not a celebration, but a blistering indictment of a system that abuses soldiers and then neglects them as veterans. But fans would also find ways to misread 'Dancing in the Dark' and 'Glory Days', expressions of crushing anxiety carried by infectious, stadium choruses. Few albums have ever captured the price of superstardom so succinctly – the risk that what you say might not be what people hear." "One thing that's inarguable is the greatness of the songs, and while the very '80s production isn't everyone's cup of tea, it gives the record a sense of added historical value, placing it squarely within its politically fraught moment."

Uproxx: #4: "By the time this album was released, Bruce had discovered his most effective commercial formula: He still wrote intense and alienated songs, but he made them sound happy."

UCR: #8: "The album that turned Springsteen into a global megastar, 'Born in the U.S.A.' has sold 15 million copies in the U.S. and spawned six Top 10 singles. And while the high-gloss, synth-heavy production may be a bit grating three decades later, it's not enough to obscure the strength and diversity of the songs -- from the heartbreaking 'Downbound Train' to the poppy 'Dancing in the Dark' to the angry, surging (and often misinterpreted) title track."

Spin: #4: "The intertwined dual phenomena of Michael Jackson's Thriller and MTV's arrival hit popular music like a lightning bolt in the '80s. Suddenly everything seemed bigger, from sales to singles campaigns to video budgets. For better or worse, the major labels reinvested a lot of that largesse into established '70s rockers who released their biggest sellers in the mid-'80s, from David Bowie and Dire Straits to Van Halen and ZZ Top. But none of them seized the zeitgeist quite as well as Springsteen, whose desire to make a nuanced political statement — and a killer rock record with synthesizers — crystallized perfectly in 1984. Born in the U.S.A. was the second album to send seven singles to the top 10 of the Hot 100 (the first was Thriller, naturally). But there's no filler, either, with deep cuts like "Bobby Jean" and "No Surrender" standing tall alongside "Dancing in The Dark" and the other hits. "Simple enough to be easily grasped, different enough to stand out from the thousand other songs in the air, these melodies and rhythms resonated with emotions as basic as lust, loneliness, anger and yearning and gave them shape," wrote Geoffrey Himes in his 2005 Born to Run book for the 33 1/3 series."

Guardian: #3: "Misunderstood, yes, but Springsteen has to shoulder some of the blame: make an album that sounds like a state fairground on 4 July and plenty of people are going to think you are celebrating America. It's possibly the place where Springsteenisms calcify into cliche – Darlington County, Working on the Highway, No Surrender – but it's played with such fire, such total commitment, that it brooks no doubt."

Track listing

All tracks are written by Bruce Springsteen

Side one

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Born in the U.S.A."	4:39
2.	"Cover Me"	3:26
3.	"Darlington County"	4:48
4.	"Working on the Highway"	3:11
5.	"Downbound Train"	3:35
6.	"I'm on Fire"	2:36

Side two

No.	Title	Length
1.	"No Surrender"	4:00
2.	"Bobby Jean"	3:46
3.	"I'm Goin' Down"	3:29
4.	"Glory Days"	4:15
5.	"Dancing in the Dark"	4:01
6.	"My Hometown"	4:33
Total length:		46:41

Personnel

According to the liner notes:

• Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, lead guitar, acoustic guitar

The E Street Band

• Roy Bittan – piano, synthesizer, background vocals
• Clarence Clemons – saxophone, percussion, background vocals
• Danny Federici – Hammond organ, glockenspiel, piano ("Born in the U.S.A.")
• Garry Tallent – bass guitar, background vocals
• Steven Van Zandt – acoustic guitar, mandolin, harmony vocals
• Max Weinberg – drums, background vocals

Additional musicians

• Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg – background vocals ("Cover Me" and "No Surrender")
• Ruth Jackson – background vocals ("My Hometown")

Technical

• Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, Steven Van Zandt – producers
• Toby Scott – engineer
• Bob Clearmountain – mixing
• John Davenport, Jeff Hendrickson, Bruce Lampcov, Billy Strauss, Zöe Yanakis – assistant engineers
• Bob Ludwig – mastering
• Bill Scheniman – engineer ("Cover Me")
• Andrea Klein – art direction, design, cover design
• Annie Leibovitz – photography
• David Gahr – additional photography

Charts

Weekly charts

Weekly chart performance for Born in the U.S.A.

Chart (1984–2003)	Peak position
Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)	1
Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)	1
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)	37
Canada Top Albums/CDs (RPM)	1
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)	1
European Albums (European Top 100 Albums)	2
French Albums (SNEP)	2
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)	1
Italian Albums (Musica e Dischi)	2
Japanese Albums (Oricon)	6
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)	1
Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)	1
Spanish Albums (PROMUSICAE)	2
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	1
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)	1
UK Albums (OCC)	1
US Billboard 200	1

Year-end charts

Year-end chart performance for Born in the U.S.A.

Chart (1984)	Position
Australian Albums Chart	7
Canadian Albums Chart	1
Dutch Albums Chart	61
Japanese Albums Chart	53
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)	2
UK Albums Chart	37
US Billboard Top 200 Albums	28
Chart (1985)	Position
Australian Albums Chart	2
Austrian Albums Chart	4
Canadian Albums Chart	7
Danish Albums Chart	5
Dutch Albums Chart	1
French Albums Chart	19
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)	1
Swiss Albums Chart	3
UK Albums Chart	4
US Billboard Top Pop Albums	1
Chart (1986)	Position
Canadian Albums Chart	67
Spanish Albums Chart	11
US Billboard 200	16
Chart (2015)	Position
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	94
Chart (2016)	Position
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	75
Chart (2017)	Position
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	96
Chart (2018)	Position
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	98
Chart (2019)	Position
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	82
Chart (2020)	Position
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	63
Chart (2021)	Position
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)	157
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	68
Chart (2022)	Position
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)	156
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	92
Chart (2023)	Position
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)	142
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)	72
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)	54

Certifications and sales

‹See Tfd›‹See Tfd›

Sales certifications for Born in the U.S.A.

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Australia (ARIA)	14× Platinum	980,000‡
Belgium (BEA)	Platinum	75,000
Brazil	—	100,000
Canada (Music Canada)	Diamond	1,000,000^
Denmark (IFPI Danmark)	3× Platinum	60,000‡
Finland (Musiikkituottajat)	2× Platinum	108,913
France (SNEP)	Platinum	300,000*
Germany (BVMI)	2× Platinum	1,000,000^
Italy (FIMI) sales since 2009	Platinum	50,000*
Italy	—	1,000,000
Japan (Oricon Charts)	—	212,700
Mexico (AMPROFON)	Platinum	250,000‡
New Zealand (RMNZ)	17× Platinum	255,000‡
Portugal (AFP)	Gold	20,000^
South Africa	—	100,000
Spain (PROMUSICAE)	Gold	50,000^
Switzerland (IFPI Switzerland)	3× Platinum	150,000^
United Kingdom (BPI)	3× Platinum	1,120,000
United States (RIAA)	17× Platinum	17,000,000‡
Summaries
Worldwide	—	30,000,000
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

See also

• List of best-selling albums
• List of best-selling albums in Australia
• List of best-selling albums in Italy
• List of best-selling albums in New Zealand
• List of best-selling albums in the United States

References

Sources

• Burger, Jeff (2013). Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-61374-437-6.
• Carlin, Peter Ames (2012). Bruce. New York City: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-9182-8.
• Dolan, Marc (2012). Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-39308-135-0.
• Dreier, Peter (2012). The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame. Nation Books. p. 436. ISBN 978-1-56858-681-6.
• Gaar, Gillian G. (2016). Boss: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band – The Illustrated History. Minneapolis: Voyageur Press. ISBN 978-0-76034-972-4.
• Himes, Geoffrey (2005). Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-0-8264-1661-2.
• Karas, Matty (1998). "Bruce Springsteen". In DiMartino, Dave (ed.). Music in the 20th Century. Oxfordshire: Routledge. p. 605. ISBN 0-7656-8012-2.
• Kirkpatrick, Rob (2007). The Words and Music of Bruce Springsteen. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-27598-938-5.
• Larkin, Colin (2011). "Bruce Springsteen". Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th ed.). London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
• Margotin, Philippe; Guesdon, Jean-Michel (2020). Bruce Springsteen All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track. London: Cassell Illustrated. ISBN 978-1-78472-649-2.
• Marsh, Dave (1987). Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s. New York City: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-394-54668-7.
• Marsh, Dave (2004). Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts – The Definitive Biography, 1972–2003. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-96928-4.
• Springsteen, Bruce (2016). Born to Run. New York City: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-4151-5.
• Springsteen, Bruce (2003). Songs. London: Virgin Books. ISBN 978-0-7535-0862-6.

External links

• Zmbro/Born in the U.S.A. at Discogs (list of releases)