Born in the U.S.A. (CD - 1984)

Personnel: Bruce Springsteen (vocals, guitar); Steve Van Zandt (acoustic guitar, mandolin, background vocals); Clarence Clemons (saxophone, percussion, background vocals); Danny Federici (piano, organ, glockenspiel); Roy Bittan (piano, synthesizer, background vocals); Garry Tallent (bass, background vocals); Max Weinberg (drums, background vocals); La Bamba, Ruth Jackson (background vocals).

Producers: Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, Steve Van Zandt.

Recorded at The Power Station and The Hit Factory, New York, New York.

Personnel: Clarence Clemons (vocals, saxophone, percussion, background vocals); Danny Federici (vocals, piano, organ, keyboards, glockenspiel); Garry Tallent (horns, background vocals); Max Weinberg (drums, background vocals); Roy Bittan (piano, keyboards, synthesizer, background vocals); Bruce Springsteen (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Steven Van Zandt (vocals, guitar, mandolin); Steve VanZandt (acoustic guitar, mandolin); Richie Rosenberg (trombone); La Bamba, Ruth Jackson (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Bob Clearmountain.

Recording information: HIt Factory; Power Station; The Hit Factory, New York, NY.

Photographer: Annie Leibovitz.

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. ~ William Ruhlmann

It's almost hard to believe now that for the first decade of his career Bruce Springsteen was a gigantic cult artist; a musician who could sell a couple of million records and fill hockey rinks, but who was was no more likely than Elvis Costello to get airplay on pop radio.

BORN IN THE USA was the album on which he flexed his muscles (literally) and changed all that. With song titles and choruses that seemed to reflect all that was good and strong in America, belying songs that were about everything that was going wrong, BORN IN THE USA was one of those cultural events that resonated with just about everybody--from both Republican and Democratic politicians, to Vietnam veterans (the title-track was a brutal account of a vet's homecoming), to social critics who found layers of meaning in these tales of disillusioned America, to dance-music DJs who found palpable beats in the dark passions of "Dancing In The Dark" and "Cover Me," to fist-raising pop fans who turned seven of these songs into top-10 singles and kept BORN IN THE USA in a year-long battle for the top spot on the album chart. It was as if no other album mattered that year.

Musically, BORN IN THE USA was as lean and muscular as Springsteen himself, trading in the E Street Band's over-the-top saxophone-and-piano sound of old for a sleeker, forward-driving guitar-and-synthesizer feel (foreshadowing a future in which long-time sax sidekick Clarence Clemons would be gone, and mild-mannered pianist/synth-player Roy Bittan would emerge as a full-blown collaborator). Continuing in the vein of NEBRASKA, the songs were plainspoken, folk-derived tunes, although this time they leapt into big, sing-along choruses. And, seemingly, the whole world sang along. minimize