1984: Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen

By Johanna Sommer

Lately When I Look Into Your Eyes

Born in the U.S.A. has 12 tracks and I love exactly 6 and ½ of them. 

It is not rare to talk to a Springsteen fan and find they feel similarly, though what is more interesting is to learn that their preferred half tends to differ from yours. My six include “Cover Me,” “Downbound Train,” “I’m On Fire,” “Bobby Jean,” “I’m Goin Down,” and “Dancing in the Dark.” For me, these selections are the support beams of an otherwise faulty structure, speaking for the other half-baked attempts and then some.

I give an extra half point for “My Hometown,” for though I’ve never been a fan, sonically, of its specific pensive lull, I respect what it accomplishes. The album’s closer displays the cyclical torment of a Springsteen character better than any other on this album: the speaker starts off as an 8-year-old sitting in his dad’s lap in their family Buick, and ends the song with his own son between himself and the wheel, looking around at the same town he’s never learned how to get away from. It is a capsule of tradition and place, even when those traits feel like an elder's scratchy, passed-down sweater; and, of course, it focuses on the shared experience of the individual, while applying to many. 

Perhaps Springsteen’s greatest trick of all, and perhaps not a trick but rather the product of his shocking luck and talent, is how he can twist the rag of his solitude dry, and translate this sweat onto the stage of 20,000 seat arenas for six decades. Rarely can a writer be faced with such proof of resonance, and often I wonder if each person waiting in line to witness Springsteen's glorious exhibition has similarly felt like they live on a treadmill, lungs burning all the way to nowhere. For one, “I’m On Fire” is a song that is obscenely popular in a way that I find mystifying. It is overwhelmingly sexy, of course, and maybe everyone who listens to it just wants to feel for a moment like they are the only one who can cool that stud’s desire. The vibrant images of “I’m On Fire” are not ones of being laid on silk sheets while rose petals cascade from the ceiling. They are brain-splitting depression and utter loss of spirit, with sex as a last-stop attempt to feel. And yet, when I saw the song performed at Buffalo’s KeyBank Center this past March, the audience sang every word with a fervor only matched by “Born to Run.” These are the moments where I cannot help but think of him as some kind of magician. Or maybe it is as simple as being an evocative writer hidden behind a countenance that resembles every good-looking Corleone combined. Whichever it is, I wish he didn’t use the term “little girl” as prolifically as he does. That was one early rock’n’roll characteristic he did not need to incorporate s0 literally. 

 I find Springsteen to be most compelling at these points of desperation and submission and no song makes losing as fun as “I’m Goin Down.” Every time I hear the familiar jolt of those god-damned ‘ 80s drums crash into place, the corners of my lips start to creep north and I can’t help but feel that it is an honor to sink by his side. Because yeah, maybe we both failed, and yeah, maybe it's our fault, but man, I have never felt so full of joy than when I’m wrapped in this three-minute-and-twenty-nine-second swaddle of surrender. The first time I felt this way toward this song was when I was caught selling weed when I was 14 (it was really just pre-rolled joints to be clear), which happened around the same time I discovered Springsteen as someone I could really love, not just as a hand-me-down from my parents. I have listened to this song and felt its gentle defeat in many different contexts in the years since, no matter how minimal or dire my need for comfort was. It almost didn’t make the album. In that case, I would have missed out on a dear companion in this life of trial and release. 

Weakness is a trait Springsteen does well. The sense of urgency is so present in “Cover Me,” it sounds like he is speeding through the recording just so he can get out of the studio sooner. It’s a flurry of want and a rejection of all that is outside the bedroom; the speaker on his knees  pleading for comfort in a world of cruelty. Similarly, “Downbound Train” is a knockout, lyrically and emotionally. It is of cinematic proportion in the way he sets up verses of desolation, a man plagued by loss: “She packed her bags left me behind/ She bought a ticket on the Central Line.” The speaker’s dreams are corrupted by images of her warmth and the train-whistle’s sharp cry of abandonment, causing him to feel a moment of delusion in the third verse, which really acts as more of a bridge. Briefly, it seems the feeling of need has shifted, and the partner wants the speaker back, causing him to run “till’ I thought my chest would explode.” When he reaches their wedding bed, however, it is empty and he hears that “long whistle whine,” before going limp with grief. Not only does the speaker’s sense of reality lapse, but the composition does as well, abandoning all but Roy Bittan’s synths, a few plucked strings, and Springsteen’s despair. Hardly is there a moment to dwell before Max Weinberg’s drums snap the world back into place, all else absent except work and the rain. The last chorus, as well as the first, ropes the listener in, as Springsteen sings, “Now don’t it feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train,” and after just three minutes of observed heartbreak it kinda feels like you are. Tears falling while laboring on the same railroad that carried your love away, out of sight but trapped inside the mind.   

I think what many of his indifferent observers don’t realize is that you [nearly] never want to live in a Springsteen song, but rather you cannot help but recognize a fragment of your being along the record grooves. Perhaps this is how he continues to be so beloved despite most of his fans, and himself, never experiencing endless hours of monotonous physical labor and yet still feel a kinship to the subject matter. Many think Springsteen glamorizes work. I don’t find that he does, as much as he warns of the emotional labor of sacrifice and all of the factors in one’s life they cannot control but are demanded to live with in order to survive. A great Springsteen song celebrates the choice (when one is afforded it) to keep living even when the terms of this life are unjust. He believes in love that waits up for you after a twelve-hour shift, and love that is just around the corner, even when the hallway is a long one.

So often his romanticism becomes a primary focus, and let's be clear: I bite at "the everlasting kiss" as much as the next guy, but the Springsteen that I can never look away from is the speaker who fears that in this darkness he will disappear and the one who works down at the car wash where all it ever does is rain. In no way are these figures stripped of the romance of hunger and faith, and often these qualities are central to the doomed Romeos littered across his catalog.  I guess what I am saying is that there is a darkness, not just because it graces an album title, and this darkness is vast. 

I think many of those who have never sat with Springsteen think he is all thick-arms-jutting-out-of-white-t-shirt and tight-ass-in-Levi's  and that he sleeps with the American flag as a blanket. Partially responsible is the chauvinist crudity of Annie Leibovitz’ cover photo, or maybe some would think of him this way even if Raegan hadn't used "Born In The U.S.A." as a paradoxical rallying call. Perhaps I say this because I don’t want to admit that I do resent his use of that chorus, album title, and cover, and the passivity of these executive decisions that allowed him to benefit from every direction, allowing the listener to believe whatever they wanted to hear. 

This is the larger problem of “Born in the U.S.A.” The title track, like “No Surrender” and “Glory Days,” has a chorus that deceives the verses, creating a trap for conclusions. In each case, the verses set up a story that the chorus, and often the mirth of the musical accompaniment, doesn’t live up to, resulting in a confused composition. These songs are also all wildly popular, and partially are able to be because Springsteen evades the final nail in his critique-coffin, resulting in ambiguity and allowing the listener to blindly revel in their “Glory Days” when the whole rest of the song suggests the opposite. Nearly the same could be said for “Dancing in the Dark,” though there is a lucidity to that song’s speaker that the previous songs lack. After all, the horror is in tandem with the will to action, as the speaker is dancing amid darkness, trying to reach for that elusive happiness so absent from the verses. “There’s something happening somewhere/ Baby, I just know that there is,” is proof of a bleak optimism that congeals the verse/chorus desperation into what I believe to be the most well-rounded anthem on the album. I try to mold him into an idol of my own convictions, but the truth is Springsteen is for everyone: the good and the less-good, the extremes and in-betweens.

I guess my own untenable conclusion is that to not like half doesn’t mean you cannot love the whole. I would still take a “Born in the U.S.A.” with moments of eye-rolls than none at all, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t savor these endearing moments due to the source of their creation. Maybe the more important part is that it actually has nothing to do with Springsteen the rock star and has everything to do with Springsteen the writer. The writer  who makes me believe I can have a best friend in a song. His art is making the singular and the diminutive become staggering and communal, because he is not just Bruce Springsteen but Bruce Springsteen and THE E STREET BAND and through the mass he transforms from a man into a greater voice. 

 BIO: Johanna is a recent graduate of SUNY Purchase, where she received degrees in journalism and literature. She irregularly posts on her blog and thinks a lot about Carrie Brownstein. Currently she is reading Solmaz Sharif's Customs and Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown. 

Instagram : @jojosommer Medium: johannasommer.medium