Born in the U.S.A.

by

Bruce Springsteen

Edit

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.

This is probably my favourine Bruce album and the tracks still sound as good as they always did but now we get them in a cool lp sleeve format.

Why just 3 stars then? Well, the recording isn't remastered and so the sound is about the same quality as the cheaper U.S. press that you can get you hands on elsewhere. So unless you are a very big fan of lp sleeves like I am, you may not want to spend the extra bucks on this.

Don't get me wrong, the album is still great with regards the tracks but I guess if you already have this, what's it going to take to make you wanna get another version of the same thing? I'm guessing it's either improved sound quality and/or improved packaging. This disc only fulfils one of these two criteria so you decide what you wanna do.

By the way, it's the same with the other titles in this format like "Born To Run" and "Darkness...Town" etc. just so you know. As I don't already have copies of these discs, I didn't mind too much but I don't know about you.