The music industry has become increasingly obsessed with anniversaries of record release dates—no matter how tenuous its math (“It’s the 23 1/2th anniversary of Is This It by the Strokes! Let’s celebrate!”).
Forty years ago this month in 1984 saw the release of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. The album was truly transformative and impactful not just on the music industry and Springsteen’s career, but ensured his place on the ‘80s Mount Rushmore along the visages of Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna.
Of the album’s 12 tracks, seven of them were released as singles, and all went Top Ten. To date, it’s gone 7X platinum and sold over 30 million copies.
And let’s not forget that even President Ronald Reagan (or, at least, one of his speechwriters) in the grip of Bruce Fever completely misinterpreted the actual meaning of the title track…though the Gipper was hardly the only one to do so (looking at you, George Will).
Noted music journo Steven Hyden celebrates this Ruby Jubilee with a deep, deep dive into the album, the man, the work—and related topics—with the somewhat ominously titled There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland (272 pp., $32, Hachette Books).
What this book is not, as Hyden says in the intro, is a Springsteen bio or a “making of the record” history. Instead, he’s more focused on topics like why Bruce made it at that particular point in his career and its popular explosion, how it changed the culture, and what it means four decades down the road.
In these pages, Hyden has side convos about Springsteen’s relationship (personal and metaphorically) with a host of figures from Elvis and Bob Dylan and Steven Van Zandt to Vietnam vet/author of Born on the Fourth of July Ron Kovic, intense director/writer Paul Schrader, and artists ranging from the Johns Fogerty and Mellencamp to Tom Petty and Bob Seger.
He also digs into Springsteen’s transformation from the skinny, scruffy, near-homeless looking vagabond of the Darkness and River-era to the newly-muscular, pumped, denim-and-bandana wearing Springsteen that exuded a physical power showcased in his sleeveless T-shirts.
The fact that the nation’s biggest movie star of the year was Sylvester Stallone with similarly-sculpted biceps was a more than fitting allegory for an “American strength” projected (truthfully or not) by the Reagan era in its prime. That the look became a go-to for parodies of Bruce and even shows up as a Halloween or concert-going costume also speaks volumes.
Though it’s a bit cringey when Hyden mentions that the then-fortysomething Dylan began to adapt a sort of Springsteen look in the mid-‘80s, and gives off an, uh “DILF vibe” (????).
Hyden also notes there’s a lot of closing-in-on-middle-age masculine pain in the lyrics. Think about how much self-hatred the narrator of “Dancing in the Dark” plainly professes, though his laments are wrapped in a synth-heavily booty shaking sound. And we learn how the grim title track had its roots in an even-grimmer tune that Springsteen was working on simply called “Vietnam.”
While a casual Bruce or Born in the U.S.A. fan can enjoy this book, it’s really catnip for Hyden and other diehards to jump headlong into what he calls “some real Boss Nerd shit.” It’s the literary equivalent of a great roundtable discussion where everyone already knows what terms like “Electric Nebraska,” The “And Then He Said ‘That’s Good’ Speech” and “Depressed early ’83 L.A. Bruce” mean.
Hyden has an interesting section that – shocking to any Gen Xer – has to explain the importance of MTV as if it were (perish the thought!) ancient history. How the channel really was the last vestige of musical “monoculture,” a national radio station that could create superstars based on visuals or (in the case of Springsteen) both introduce him to a new audience and burnish his exposure and stature to the existing fan base.
And remember how we all had to sit through videos we didn’t want to see to get to the ones we did–but that nonetheless seeped into our collective musical memory banks? How the hippiest teen in L.A. and the most rural counterpart in Wisconsin could be digesting the music (and looks) of Duran Duran, Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper, and Wham! At the same time?
For Springsteen his videos—closely hewing to showing him either in a live concert setting or “casting” him in a series of blue-collar roles (the grease monkey in “I’m on Fire,” the construction worker/baseball enthusiast workingman of “Glory Days”). In fact, Hyden could do a considerable job making this the sole topic of his next book.
The massive worldwide tour, of course, was a screaming success. Though oddly, Hyden notes that Bruce’s camp officially filmed very little of the groundbreaking jaunt. And he tells how and why Springsteen didn’t make just his next album sound Born in the U.S.A. II to further fan the fires of Bossmania.
In the end—and speaking to the book’s subtitle—Hyden makes his case that in today’s America, there is no mythical and separate “Heartland” in the United States anymore. And how modern politics and social issues and online anger divide us, driving to potential “chaos and disorder.”
It’s a heavy note to end the book on, and the theory’s relationship to Bruce Springsteen and Born in the U.S.A. will seem tenuous to some. But with the passion of a lifelong fan who first heard the cassette in a very-Springsteen way (in his father’s car as a 6-year-old) and the keen mind of a music journalist, Hyden’s book is about far more than a dozen tunes produced in the mid-‘80s. And it’s a very welcome addition to the Boss Bookshelf.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
