If not - if there were any misunderstandings out there - my mother thanks you, my father thanks you and my children thank you, because I've learned that that's where the money is."Īfter the applause and laughter died down, he added: "But the songwriter always gets another shot to get it right." "I'm sure that everybody here tonight understood it. "After it came out, I read all over the place that nobody knew what it was about," he said before performing "Born in the U.S.A" to a crowd in 1995. After the president praised him, the artist mused that if people misunderstood his music, that was fine - it only made him more popular. Springsteen's politics leaned well left of Reagan's. "If all Americans - in labor and management, who make steel or cars or shoes or textiles - made their products with as much energy and confidence as Springsteen and his merry band make music, there would be no need for Congress to be thinking about protectionism," he wrote. "I thought, 'This is a way to impress my children,' and I said yes."Īfter the show, Will penned a column praising the hardworking musicians onstage, albeit in political terms. "Max Weinberg, of whom I'd never heard, who was the drummer for the E Street Band, of which I'd never heard, called me up out of the blue and said who he worked for and would I like to come see The Boss sing," Will says. Will, noted for his bow ties and conservative politics, tells NPR he saw Springsteen in concert that year.Īmerican Anthem How 'This Land Is Your Land' Roamed And Rambled Into American Life He may have been influenced by a sometime adviser: The columnist George F. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about."īy playing on the hope, Reagan seemed to overlook the despair. It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. That would be President Ronald Reagan, who referenced The Boss in a 1984 campaign speech, saying: "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. "With a bandanna on and a cutoff shirt and the fist-pumping, it felt like a celebration of being born in the USA - when really, it's a defiant song about 'I was born in the USA, and I deserve better than what I'm getting.' I think plenty of people didn't get what it was about, including the president of the United States." "Bruce started every show with a really rousing, anthemic-type version of 'Born in the U.S.A.,' " Christie recalls. Take Chris Christie - yes, that one - who saw Springsteen at New Jersey's Giants Stadium decades before he became governor of that state. Springsteen fans will tell you the effect that big chorus had on crowds, whether or not the message of the verses was entirely understood. The blues and your daily realities are in the details of the verses." "In my songs, the spiritual part, the hope part, is in the choruses. "The pride was in the chorus," Springsteen said to host Terry Gross in a 2005 interview. And it starts out as something just called 'Vietnam.' "Īs the musician later told WHYY's Fresh Air, he meant it that way. "After that tour ends, there's a number of places where he's trying to write about the Vietnam veteran experience, so the song grows out of that moment. "He did a big benefit in the summer of '81 for Vietnam veterans in Los Angeles and met with vets," Onkey says. But as NPR Music director Lauren Onkey explained to Morning Edition, it took time for Springsteen himself to figure out just what the song was meant to say. NPR's American Anthem series is about songs that Americans embrace in ways that reveal who we are - and of these songs, "Born in the U.S.A." may hold the title for the most historically misunderstood. Listen only to its surging refrain, though, and you could mistake it for an uncomplicated celebration of patriotism. If you're listening closely, the lyrics of " Born in the U.S.A." make its subject pretty clear: The 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen describes a Vietnam War veteran who returns home to desperate circumstances and few options.
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