What does ‘Born in the USA’ really mean?
Bruce Springsteen has been known to paint vivid images in the listener’s mind whenever he steps in front of a microphone. From the tales of rough-and-tumble rock and rollers in Born to Run to the nowhere-bound losers in Nebraska, every one of Springsteen’s albums has a specific agenda from the moment they start playing. While ‘The Boss’ was flirting with rock and roll commercialism on Born in the USA, the lyrics were a lot more pointed than one would expect.
Coming out of the sessions for Nebraska, Springsteen was still in a heavy state of mind when the age of MTV was starting. Since Springsteen and the E Street Band were never the most photogenic at the best of times, they figured the next best thing was to make songs that sounded more commercial, bringing in synthesisers for the first time in the studio.
While the sounds were pointing towards the future, Springsteen also looked towards the past when writing the title track. Not being that far removed from the era of the Vietnam War, ‘Born in the USA’ surrounds a soldier who came home from war and is having a huge adjustment back to normal life.
Since he had been through hell and seen things that no one was meant to see, the soldier is the kind of person that time forgot, with many hippies watching him come home and spit on him for the crime of being forced into a war he didn’t want to fight in. Throughout the song, Springsteen talks about the struggles someone like this man would face, including missing a line in one of the verses to compose himself when talking about a buddy who couldn’t make it back home.
Despite the patriotic-sounding chorus, the concept of ‘Born in the USA’ is clearly meant to be satirical. Since the entire song sounds like a backyard barbecue in the middle of smalltown America, Springsteen bucks the trend by talking about the harsh side of America, where those are willing to do whatever they can to save their own skin, even if it means young kids get blown to bits.
Is Bruce Springsteen political?
Then again, this is far from the first or the last time that Springsteen has brought politics into his music. As far back as the 1980s, Springsteen was supportive of various Democratic causes, including playing the famous No Nukes Festival alongside artists like Jackson Browne and Tom Petty, each looking to put an end to those who drop bombs on the ones that don’t agree with them.
If anything, Springsteen has helped use his platform as a voice for good half the time. When facing a terrible tragedy like 9/11, Springsteen would provide a voice for the people on the album The Rising, sounding like the kind of guy trying to make sense of it all amid the smoke on tracks like ‘You’re Missing’ and ‘My City of Ruins’.
For years, though, fans have still missed the point of what ‘Born in the USA’ was meant to be for America. Whereas most fans just look at the picture of Springsteen’s denim-clad ass in front of the American flag on the album cover and think he’s a patriotic good old boy, this isn’t just another answer to ‘God Bless the USA’. This is one of the proudest American artists of his generation, putting a mirror up to his country and seeing what they make of the horrors that they have wrought.
