Was there ever a more misunderstood song than Born In The USA? Well, perhaps Every Breath You Take by the Police when it gets treated as a romantic song. But, this title track gets treated as some kind of big jingoistic anthem and an anti-war protest song, when it’s neither, really. Springsteen’s narrator is “Born in a dead man’s town” and comes up through the school of hard knocks before being drafted into the Vietnam War. On his return, he’s fobbed off for work (“Hirin’ man says ‘Son if it was up to me...’”) and broods on his former comrades-in-arms lost in the war and ends up like many characters in Springsteen songs with “Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go”.
And yet, there’s still a sense, somewhat, of pride in his country. Yes, it’s got heavy irony to the overtones, but also one gets the sense that the narrator is telling us “Look, I was born here too. I exist. I still love my country, even if it hates me and disappoints me these days.”
The veteran in Born In The USA may think that he has nowhere to go, but other songs on the album feature the old Springsteen favourite of the open road, with mixed results for the characters. Darlington County is a boppy country-rock tune with a rousing chorus to fade (shades of Creedance Clearwater Revival) about two friends going on a road trip, while in the rockabilly Working On The Highway, the narrator is running away with his underage bride but cannot escape the law, and ends up in a chain gang instead.
The album takes a hard turn in sound from Nebraska, returning to the full E-Street band but also updating the sound to a very Eighties quality involving heavy drums and widespread use of synthesisers. This is especially notable in the hit single Dancing In The Dark, which is lyrically typical Springsteen about finding small pleasures in an otherwise restricted and downtrodden life. Other big bits include the stripped-down, and surprisingly short, ballad to young lust that is I’m On Fire, and the look at nostalgia that is Glory Days. I checked, because this has a thematic similarity to Don Henley’s Boys Of Summer, and that song also came out in 1984, so there must have been something in the water. Possibly Reagan trying to evoke feelings of better days in the past.
I think in some ways the glossier, MTV-style production on this album undercut Springsteen’s usual sentiments about the plight of the working-class American, as it no longer feels as if he’s one of them. This may be the album with his biggest hits on, but for me it feels less authentic than previous entries.
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