Theme: America: Bruce Springsteen "Born in the U.S.A."

To celebrate our nation's official birthday, I thought we could do 'America' as our weekly theme.


First up: Bruce Springsteen. When "Born in the U.S.A." (Springsteen 1984) was released, President Ronald Reagan saw this as an opportunity to use Springsteen's song as America's new theme song. To Reagan, the song was a way to revitalize a patriotic American-masculinity. Obviously Reagan was not listening to anything but the chorus "Born in the U.S.A."

If you take a listen to each verse, you can see that the song is very anti-war and somewhat anti-American, as in America's bad and unwelcoming reception of returned Vietnam soldiers:

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man

[...]

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said "Son don't you understand"


Born in the U.S.A., man.