I don't know that all of this is true, by the way. Don't mistake my writings in this column for expertise. In terms of "why this album is important," if we're talking about generally agreed-upon story details like, I dunno, "Born in the U.S.A. is Springsteen's most commercially successful album," then I can get to where we need to go. That's important if you want to know the myth of Springsteen. But that's not really what I'm going for here. I'm more responding to the text, and telling you why it's important to me. And you can extrapolate from there, if you want. Like, if it's important to me, emotionally, then it's probably important to other people for the same reasons. But all I'm doing is listening and taking my best stab at what Springsteen is trying to say in the lyrics and the music. That's guesswork. I don't know what I'm talking about pretty often, and so why would I know here?
The thing about the title track on this album, "Born in the U.S.A.," is that it's one of the clearest and most obvious texts that Springsteen ever put to song. If you listen to the lyrics, you have no issue determining what the artist is trying to say through this song that he made. But the really interesting thing, almost to an infamous degree, is how often this very song has historically been and continues to be misunderstood and misread. I'm not an expert, but I know this to be true, and you can take my word on it, almost as if I were an expert—if you are a conservative and you love Bruce Springsteen and love belting out the chorus to "Born in the U.S.A." and love watching your favorite republican candidate dance around to it onstage, then you are a fucking moron.
A moron, or I suppose purposefully obtuse as some artless self-defense mechanism. There might be someone, a Chris Christie type, who loves the music and loves then geography of the music and likes to believe that they are aligned with the characters in these songs but more so align themselves politically with the ruling class that causes the problems described in the songs that Springsteen writes. You can love the opening couplet of "Born down in a dead man's town / The first kick I took was when I hit the ground" and then vote for the people who are doing the kicking, ya know?
I don't even think that this is a broad statement that Bruce is making here. The text has nothing to do with political lines; that's all context. The text is about Vietnam veterans, and how they were second-class citizens when they returned home. If I say it's about class warfare from the ruling class, then that's me getting something that I need from the song. I think that Springsteen would later traffic in such specific themes, but he's not there yet. I also think that Springsteen himself, currently, would pointedly spell those broader themes out, but a sentiment like "trump is a scourge upon this country," while absolutely true, would make for a terrible song.
A dichotomy that we've danced (in the dark) around in this column so far is Bruce's ability to write fun old-school rock 'n' roll songs and place 'em next to solemn touching dramatic ballads, with the sequencing still making sense despite going from, like, "Point Blank" to "Cadillac Ranch," or from "She's the One" to "Meeting Across the River." The cool thing about Born in the U.S.A.—and the reason that you could reasonably consider this Bruce's critical peak as well as his commercial peak, even though I don't quite agree with the assessment—is that that dichotomy between the two types of songs are finally alchemized into one single song. "Darlington County" is upbeat and catchy but has this subtle backdrop of "we're all kinda stuck here," as just one example.
"Glory Days" seems to be polarizing within the fandom. Consider me a defender. I like that it's upbeat and a little goofy. I like John Cougar Mellencamp, and I think a lot of that artist's music can be traced back to this song, which is fine. And of course I love the nostalgia piece, the fact that nostalgia is being turned over and examined within the nostalgic song. He's catching up with old friends, but also says "when I get old," as if that's not already here. Those glory days'll pass you by so quickly that you don't even realize you're reliving them until it's too late. I like the friction that the song creates in the question of whether it's okay to play "Remember When." Plus, the song soundtracked one of the all-time great It's Always Sunny segments, so there's that now too.
It's okay to play "Remember When" when you're talking about Springsteen songs, though, right? The first time I ever heard "I'm Going Down"—or at least the first time I ever remember hearing it, I suppose it could've played in a grocery store or out of a classic rock pickup truck at some point—was on Springsteen's 61st birthday, when I saw Free Energy and Titus Andronicus cover it together on the First Unitarian basement stage. It's a good song; I wonder if I would love it so much if that hadn't been my first exposure to it. That moment makes it feel more profound than the ode to eating puss that it actually is. See what I'm talking about with the balance?
Born in the U.S.A. is the final Springsteen album that we'll cover in this column that I keep safe within the core of my soul. I like and even love other Springsteen albums (and I'm going to learn to love a whole lot more), but this completes the part of the discography that feel like an extension of the self. I know every note on this thing. Now, that's not me saying that I'm special. Out of the entire discography, this is probably the album most likely to feel that way to the most people (save for Born to Run). The hits are there. "Dancing in the Dark" is Springsteen's highest charting song of his career! Of course people know this shit! The fact that I know it as well as I do is all timing, probably.
But it's also the fact that it's a legitimately good album. I've known Greetings for a lot longer, but I have mixed feelings about it because that's Springsteen trying to figure his sound out, and a lot of it is weak because of that. Born in the U.S.A. is the opposite. This is Springsteen crystalizing his sound. It's not my favorite (for reasons already discussed), but I'll be the first to say that it's basically a perfect album. A song like "Dancing in the Dark" is not only commercially successful but also artistically successful. Just a beautiful fucking song about feeling low and embracing the pain, but also propulsive and catchy enough to sell records. On this album, and in each song, we get the perfect mix of grace and anger and nostalgia and love.
I'm really excited to see the twists and turns from here. This is perfect, but we're just getting started.
Song for the "Tramps like Us" mixtape: "No Surrender"
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