featured-image

The below is an excerpt from There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A.

’ and the End of the Heartland by Steven Hyden, available now. As the Born in the U.S.



A. tour progressed, its cultural significance shifted in the nation’s newspapers. What started out as fodder for local music critics in 1984 eventually became an obsession for political columnists in ’85.

The most infamous example of this change would affect how Bruce Springsteen and his most popular album were perceived for decades afterward. Originally published in the Washington Post on September 13, 1984, and then syndicated to newspapers throughout the country, a column written by the paper’s most popular right-wing columnist made the case for Born in the U.S.

A. representing old-fashioned American values. Entitled “Bruce Springsteen’s U.

S.A.,” the column recounts Pulitzer Prize–winner George F.

Will’s experience at a Springsteen concert. Even while presenting himself as an unapologetic Poindexter—“I may be the only forty-three-year-old American so out of the swim that I do not even know what marijuana smoke smells like,” he admits—Will raves about the show, albeit for questionable (and cringey) reasons. “There is not a smidgen of androgyny in Springsteen,” Will writes, “who, rocketing around the stage in a T-shirt and headband, resembles Robert De Niro in the combat scenes of The Deer Hunter .

This is rock for the United Steelworkers, accompanied by the.

Back to Fashion Page