Why Bruce Springsteen has “ambivalence” about his biggest album
With the release of Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen elevated himself from a beloved rock and roll singer to a global pop megastar. With a string of successful singles and even a fair bit of MTV coverage, Springsteen was competing with the likes of Prince and Madonna as one of the biggest superstars in music. It came at a potent time as well: smack dab in the middle of the Ronald Reagan presidency.
“The President was mentioning my name the other day, and I kinda got to wondering what his favourite album must have been,” Springsteen wondered out loud to his audience at a Pittsburgh show on September 21st after Reagan cited Springsteen in one of his political speeches. “I don’t think it was the Nebraska album. I don’t think he’s been listening to this one”.
Most of the Born in the U.S.A. tracks had been born out of the reckoning with the American dream. They asked whether it still existed at the time. The nuance was famously lost on certain audiences. The President believed he could co-opt Springsteen’s lyrics as a flag-waving and jingoistic approval of his own politics. As a famously staunch supporter of the Democratic party, Springsteen wasn’t too pleased with the interpretation and would continue to have a problematic relationship with his most popular album for the rest of his career.
“‘Born in the U.S.A.‘ more or less stood by itself,” Springsteen observed later on. “The rest of the album contains a group of songs about which I’ve always had some ambivalence”. However, Springsteen also acknowledged that he needed to pay greater attention to his work after the album’s success. “Born in the U.S.A. changed my life and gave me my largest audience. It forced me to question the way I presented my music and made me think harder about what I was doing”.
Springsteen decided to avoid playing his most famous song for several years. When he did, it was stripped of the anthemic qualities of the studio recording. Certain performances would find Springsteen playing with just an acoustic guitar, and other times Springsteen would simply stomp on a box and shout the lyrics as a confrontational dirge. In more recent years, Springsteen occasionally returned the song to its synth-heavy original sound, but for his Springsteen on Broadway residency, Springsteen made sure that the song was more languid and contemplative.
Listen to the version of ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ featured in Springsteen on Broadway below.
