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by: Bruce Springsteen

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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: Rating: - Brilliant despite the overexposure Springsteen was already a major star when this classic was released, but its success valuted him into superstardom. There were SEVEN Top 10 hits, and Boss videos were everywhere in video-saturated 1984 and 1985. It would seem that his non-stop presence for eighteen months on Top-40 radio would lessen the power of these songs, but that just isn't the case--"Born In The USA" is a powerful statement about this country's lack of support toward our Vietnam veteran...something then-president Reagan missed entirely. "I'm On Fire" and "My Hometown" are softer and poignant, and "Glory Days" is a great rocker--it instantly conjures images of your high school teammates from a generation ago whose career highlights are continually discussed each Friday night at the local watering hole. There are five non-hits on the LP, and they are all excellent-- "Bobby Jean" is Springsteen's tribute to Steven Van Zandt, and it's touching as well as a fiercely pounding rocker. "No Surrender" recalls "Thunder Road," and "Downbound Train" faintly recalls the Dylan-influenced sound of the "Greetings From Asbury Park" LP. "Darlington County" and "Working On The Highway" are working-man tributes, and they're great fun. If you've shied away from this one because you got sick of the hits, give it a chance and listen to it in its entirety--the way it was meant to be heard. It was arguably the best LP of 1984 and one of Springsteen's finest. Rating: - Bruce's Best Born In The U.S.A. is the album where Bruce Springsteen made the leap from a popular rock 'n' roller to megastar and cultural icon. The songs were all over the radio in '84 & '85 and his concerts were four hour marathons. It produced 7 top ten singles (tied for the most in history with Michael Jackson's Thriller & Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation) and was in Billboard's top ten for 84 straight weeks. People could relate to him as he seemed to be just a regular hard-working, blue collar guy. The songs had the appearance of being about fulfilling the American Dream and overflowing with American pride. They have an upbeat, radio-friendly sound that helped it sell 15 million copies and become one of the most popular and misunderstood in rock history. Beneath the bouncy music and optimistic titles they are actually tales of desperation, unfilled dreams and an America that had let its characters down. The title track typifies this as it seems to be a ringing declaration of the pride to be from America, but is about a Vietnam vet whose country has kept him down from birth and never let him get up. He questions why he fought and had a brother killed in a war that he didn't understand and came back to country that welcome back as a hero, but look down upon him. Despite risking his life for it, America gave him nothing in return. "Dancing In The Dark" is the most pop-oriented song Bruce has ever recorded. Behind the dancable synthes lies a the story a man who is down and out. He is desperately looking for someone to pull him out of rut and appears to be suicidal. "Glory Days" is about life sliding away from you and failing to meet the goals and high expectations of your youth. Not everything on the album is a downer, Bruce tempers the desperation with hope. "My Hometown" tells of a man who sees a brighter future for his young son and "Bobby Jean" is a farewell and good luck message to his band mate Little Steven who was leaving the E Street Band and heading out on his own. The song that sits right in the middle of the album and pulls everything together is "No Surrender". The song says that no matter how little that you start out with, how little life gives you, how much you get kicked around, music can help save your soul and you must never stop trying to reach your hopes and dreams. In the end, even though he thinks the country has written a lot of bad checks to its people, it is the promise that it gives and possibility of fulfilling dreams, that still makes it the best place to be. Bruce Springsteen has always said that music helped save him and before finding it he was just floating through life with no purpose. Whether you love him or hate him, his music has given many people hope and a purpose to their own lives. He, himself is an embodiment of the American Dream and if Bruce can achieve it, maybe we all can. Rating: - An Album That Has Stood the Test of Time While not Springsteen's best album (although it's on the short list), this is his best known, possibly his most controversial, and there's good reason for that. True, he went for more of a typical 80s synth-pop sound on this album, but he did it so effectively that it's hard to argue with his choice. Springsteen is one of those artists preferred by the people who "know music" to the casual listener, and just as the more elitist audience trashed Dylan's HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED upon its release, many dismissed BORN IN THE USA just as casually. However, decades later, both albums are essentials in their respective artists' discographies. In Springsteen's case, he maintains his concern for everyman attitudes and paints the same portrait collage of a cross-section of America losers, dreamers and burnouts from his vintage albums. What the slicker sound of BORN IN THE USA allows Springsteen to do, apart from find a broader audience, is expand the scope of his late-20th century American landscape. Several songs on this album -- e.g.: "Working on the Highway," "My Hometown," "Downbound Train" and the title track -- evoke the blue-collar themes of his other work, but he examines others left behind by the American Dream. "Dancing in the Dark" suggests the frustrations and isolation of an urban, college-educated writer, while "Darlington County" is more reminiscent of the pent-up libido and angst of urban young men. The 80s-pop songs "I'm on Fire" and "No Surrender," while the lyrics refer to no specific location, suggest a part of the country far removed from the faded denim and rusted junkyard pastiche of Springsteen's other work. The implication is there is more in common between a struggling LA screenwriter and a laid-off Flint auto worker than either might think. The Springsteen fans who dig Bob Dylan and Neil Young (as I do) will prefer BORN TO RUN or DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN or NEBRASKA, but they will find the Boss they know and love here. The casual fans who prefer the catchier sounds of John Mellencamp or Tom Petty will want this Springsteen album above all others, and both of them will find an 80s pop album they can crank up on the car stereo without a hint of irony or guilt.

Born in the U.S.A. Music

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