When Bruce Springsteen arrived in Worcester on September 4, 1984, exactly three months after the release of his last album, “Born in the U. S. A. ,” on June 4, in the first of two performances at the Centrum, he did well. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard two hundred charts (behind Prince’s “Purple Rain”), and its second single, “Cover Me,” was at No. 17 on the singles chart, down from No. 22. It was not a bad performance.
Then it exploded.
“Born in the United States” would go on to be the most highly promoted album of 1985, eventually promoting more than 30 million copies and propelling Springsteen and his E Street Band into the stadium stratosphere. As for his relationship with Boston, he more than cemented it in the years that followed, with (among other things) a triumphant five-night adventure at the then-FleetCenter on the E Street reunion excursion in 1999, and two nights at Fenway Park in 2003, the first rock band to play there.
But 40 years later, while there’s no denying that “Born in the USA” is Springsteen’s most successful album and has attracted legions of new enthusiasts, it’s worth asking: Is this also his best album?that Peter Chianca of Boston. com asked in his e-book “Glory Days: Springsteen’s Greatest Albums,” the bankruptcy of “Born in the USA” appears next.
Launched: June 4, 1984.
Highest on the chart: U. S. USA1 / UK1
List of tracks:
1. Born in the United States
2. Cover Me
3. County Darlington
4. Work on the road
5. Downhill
6. I’m on Fire
7. No surrender
8. Bobby-Jean
9. I’m Leaving
10. Days of Glory
11. Dancing in the Dark
12. My Hometown
When Born in the USA was released. In the U. S. in 1984, the world wasn’t just in position for Bruce Springsteen. It was that Bruce Springsteen was in position for the global. Or at least for an attempt to become a monumental global celebrity.
The album was, through artwork, Springsteen’s biggest publicity effort at the time, thus far. According to Peter Ames Carlin’s biography of Springsteen, Bruce saw the option to become a superstar as an opportunity to better represent the other people he had sung to during his career. career (think of them as “the unfortunate, the abandoned, and the abandoned,” to quote Bob Dylan from “Chimes of Freedom”). Or maybe his young Elvis-fueled rock star dreams were ultimately too close to grasp.
Regardless, Born in the USA was a success beyond wildest expectations, becoming the most highly promoted album of 1985 and selling over 30 million copies. This propelled Springsteen to stadiums around the world and made him a cultural icon. It has also become a sticking point for his longtime fans, many of whom felt Springsteen had betrayed his rock’n’roll principles and attracted a new group of enthusiastic beer-drinkers and bandana-wearers with whom they feared being stuck at concerts next door.
For anyone who remembers the album only through hazy memories of the 40 most sensible radio stations of the mid-1980s — where the album’s seven most sensible singles coexisted alongside the efforts of Culture Club and Wham! — it’s easy to overstate the album’s hairy side, with its unexpected (for Springsteen) preponderance of synthesizers and pop-friendly rhythms and melodies. But listening to him today, he still maintains his own theme with the rest of his canon and indeed deserves a place in any discussion of his most productive work.
The genius of Born in the USA, in fact, lies in how it drew new enthusiasts into the Springsteen scene through the back door. It’s misleading in the way it combines a catchy pop-rock sound with lyrics about abandoned veterans, prisoners, and dying relationships. (This even fooled conservative columnist George Will, who declared, without irony, that Springsteen and his album proved that “there’s still something like being born in the United States. “)
The fact is that the themes featured on Born in the USA are the same ones Springsteen has been exploring since at least Darkness on the Edge of Town, however, the new album takes River’s formula: catchy rock ‘n’ roll along with darker meditations. and puts it in a blender. With a few exceptions, almost every song in the United States places darkness and gentleness inextricably linked. Masterfully, he added.
That said, the album as a whole is infused with unresistable beats, catchy choruses, and sung “sha-la-las” that have a remarkably good compatibility with the lively pop scene of the 1980s. Springsteen has had a pop sensibility that nevertheless sometimes reflects his earlier influences. Although still a rock album, Born in The USA was (much to the chagrin of some) at first glance undeniably existing and suitable for the Top 40 on radio.
As Springsteen himself has said, given the way many other people digest pop music without further ado—music with lyrics that fit the moment in terms of a song’s emotional influence—it’s no surprise that many listeners don’t seem to overlook this idea. burnished surface of this specific lot. The title track in particular, with its explosive synths and stadium-ready chorus, almost demands situations that you have to hear to master their meaning from the first listen.
Of course, if you listen more closely, your scathing criticism of a country willing to turn its back on its own citizens, even those who fought for it, will become very clear. The fact that so many other people haven’t done it continuously demonstrates a planned ignorance that, frankly, is a headache. We can only assume that Ronald Reagan’s advisers only listened to the chorus before recommending that Gipper use it for his conservative message about reelection.
While “Born in the United States” is the only overtly sociopolitical song on the album, others delve into the politics of relationships between friends. It’s endearing how those songs use language reserved for the warmth of the moment: “Cover Me,” “I’m Goin’ Down,” and even “I’m On Fire,” the catchy but creepy ode to a “girl” who can satisfy the preferences of a miserable, tormented and sweat-stained guy. Viewed from this angle, it’s probably no surprise that it turns out to have been picked up by every single depressed indie band of the last few decades.
“Cover Me,” in particular, is the best example of the album’s split personality: Springsteen’s tone expresses a pressing desperation (“come in and cover me,” he pleads), even as his biting guitar is paired with downright disco beats: After all, it was originally written for Boston’s Donna Summer. Even “Dancing in the Dark,” considered Springsteen’s most disposable pop single, is a masterpiece of existential languor worthy of Samuel Beckett, but disguised as a dizzying tapper.
The few songs that are musically deeper and darker, like the haunting “Downbound Train” with its unforgiving tale of loss and depression, still manage to coexist seamlessly with the album’s more hymn aspects, like the catchy “woah-oh-oh” of “No Surrender,” with its ode to friendship and three-minute records, to mention the pop melancholy of “Bobby Jean” and the honky tonk pleasures of “Darlington County” and “Glory Days. ”
But if there’s one song that most productively cements the album’s position in Springsteen’s hierarchy, it’s the final song, “My Hometown. “Both nostalgic and realistic, it recalls the escape dreams of Born to Run: the anguish of the narrator and his wife. in the face of the concept of “getting by” and Nebraska’s vision of a hardened landscape where jobs are scarce and violence is as close as possible. But it also shows a new adulthood in his sensitivity to the importance of history and non-unusual bonds: when the singer introduces his young son in his hometown, eschewing some repetition of another chorus in favor of haunting choral humming, the moment is terrifying. Looking.
Bruce himself would have possibly called the songs on Born in the USA a “purse”, but they seem far from random; They are united in combination in their lucid realism (about life’s challenges, the fleeting nature of love, and the allure and danger of nostalgia), even as they blur the line between catchy, message-oriented rock and popular (some say throwaway) dance. .
The album may still fall victim to its own good luck, and there are enthusiasts (usually the oldest, grayer, and moody ones) who go to the bathroom, or at least emit an audible groan, when “Bobby Jean” or “Glory Days” appears in a concert encore. And there’s no denying that the album’s phenomenal good fortune and the reaction that followed led Springsteen to regroup, a process of introspection that took him in several other directions over the next few years, either professionally and personally.
But if Born in the USA’s general question about whether Springsteen could get his message across to a vast global audience without having to sacrifice its underlying meaning, the answer is a resounding yes. And beyond that: it’s catchy and you can dance to. he.
Note; An edition of this article appeared on Bruce Springsteen’s blog, Blogness on the Edge of Town.