Song 8: Born In The U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen is another of a small handful of artists to have two songs in the Top 100. The two songs, My Hometown and Born In The U.S.A., are both perfect examples of where the political and the personal come together to wreck lives. My Hometown is about discarded workers, dying towns, and wanting to plant your feet but being pushed to the ground. Born In The U.S.A. is about discarded veterans, a brutal war, and being kicked after you've already been pushed to the ground.

Halifax freelance music writer Ryan McNutt:

Ronald Reagan thought it was a patriotic anthem. Countless writers have considered it a protest song. And somehow, they're both right. "Born in the USA" is an statement of nuanced, complicated nationalism written against the background of the ultimate 'stars and stripes' decade. The song's title and refrain are ironic when paired up against the verses, but not insincere: this is an anthem about what happens when one's love of country runs headfirst into the harsh reality of the times. Springsteen is bemoaning the phrase "Born in the USA"; he's howling for it to mean something profound again.

For more info on how people can learn more about music by actually, you know, listening to music, check out this 2009 article on the 25th Anniversary of this tune.

Song 53: My Hometown, Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen is an incredible poet. I struggled with the question of whether to include Youngstown in this list instead of My Hometown. Youngstown is a brilliant song that takes you through the hundred and eighty years in the life and death of Jenny, a Youngstown, Ohio steel blast furnace. My Hometown takes you through three decades of a man's life in a dying town. Youngstown is the more overtly political of the two songs, but My Hometown seems to have touched so many people, seems so real to so many people, that it made the cut.

From Youngstown:

Well my daddy worked the furnaces

Kept 'em hotter than hell

I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer

A job that'd suit the devil as well

Taconite, coke and limestone

Fed my children and made my pay

Them smokestacks reachin' like the arms of god

Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay

From My Hometown:

Now main streets whitewashed windows 
and vacant stores
Seems like there aint nobody wants 
to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill 

across the railroad tracks

Foreman says these jobs are going boys 

and they aint coming back 

to your hometown