Born In The U.S.A.

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Personnel: Bruce Springsteen (vocals, guitar); Steve Van Zandt (acoustic guitar, mandolin, background vocals); Clarence Clemons (saxophone, percussion, background vocals); Danny Federici (piano, organ, glockenspiel); Roy Bittan (piano, synthesizer, background vocals); Garry Tallent (bass, background vocals); Max Weinberg (drums, background vocals); La Bamba, Ruth Jackson (background vocals). Producers: Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, Steve Van Zandt. Recorded at The Power Station and The Hit Factory, New York, New York. Personnel: Bruce Springsteen (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Steven Van Zandt (vocals, guitar, mandolin); Steve VanZandt (acoustic guitar, mandolin); Richie Rosenberg (trombone); La Bamba, Ruth Jackson (background vocals). Audio Mixer: Bob Clearmountain. Recording information: HIt Factory (01/1982-03/1984); Power Station (01/1982-03/1984); The Hit Factory, New York, NY (01/1982-03/1984). Photographer: Annie Leibovitz. It's almost hard to believe now that for the first decade of his career Bruce Springsteen was a gigantic cult artist; a musician who could sell a couple of million records and fill hockey rinks, but who was was no more likely than Elvis Costello to get airplay on pop radio. BORN IN THE USA was the album on which he flexed his muscles (literally) and changed all that. With song titles and choruses that seemed to reflect all that was good and strong in America, belying songs that were about everything that was going wrong, BORN IN THE USA was one of those cultural events that resonated with just about everybody--from both Republican and Democratic politicians, to Vietnam veterans (the title-track was a brutal account of a vet's homecoming), to social critics who found layers of meaning in these tales of disillusioned America, to dance-music DJs who found palpable beats in the dark passions of "Dancing In The Dark" and "Cover Me," to fist-raising pop fans who turned seven of these songs into top-10 singles and kept BORN IN THE U

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Born in the U.S.A. is an album painted in big, broad strokes. But it was still too subtle for some--namely politicians who tried to tap the title track as a jingoistic anthem when it is in fact a bitter diatribe by a Vietnam War vet whose country forgot him. The rest of the album is a glorious grab bag of radio-ready populist anthems--his best display of pure pop songwriting ever--including "No Surrender," "Dancing in the Dark," "Bobby Jean," and "Glory Days" alongside more circumspect numbers such as "My Hometown" and "I'm On Fire." It's not true that there's no arguing with success, but in this case Springsteen's widespread acclaim was warranted. With Born in the U.S.A., all those predictions from a decade earlier--that Springsteen was the future of rock--had come true. --Daniel Durchholz