Elton John, Adele and REM they did it. Also Rihanna and the Rolling Stones. Yeah donald trump I would try to use his music, Taylor Swift I probably would too. Many musicians have said “no” when politicians have tried to use their music to campaign. But maybe Bruce Springsteen be the most famous of all.
In September 1984, “Born in the USA” was topping the charts, and Ronald Reaganwho was running for re-election against Walter Mondale, told the New Jersey audience that he and the singer-songwriter shared the same American dream. Springsteen disagreed. Three days later, performing in Pittsburgh, he explained his version of that dream. “At first, the idea was that we would all live here a bit like a family in which the strong can help the weak, the rich can help the poor. You know, the American dream,” he said between songs. “I don’t think it was that everyone was going to make a billion dollars, but that everyone was going to have the opportunity and the possibility to live a life with some decency and some dignity.”
This week marked 40 years of Born in the USA., Springsteen’s best-selling album. In my recent book I describe the president’s attempt to use Springsteen’s lyrics to support his evangelical vision, which included cutting welfare, boosting the military, and ending abortion, all positions beloved of the religious right. Springsteen had a different vision, and Reagan’s attempt to co-opt it prompted the singer to be more explicitly political in his words and actions.
The confusion about Born in the USA it’s easy to understand. Just look at the album cover. Springsteen appears with his back in front of a huge American flag. The flag’s red and white stripes, along with Springsteen’s white T-shirt, blue jeans, and red baseball cap, scream “America.”
So why a photo of the ass of the blue-jean rocker whose pose screams youth, sex and swagger? The photo is a Rorschach test, an intentional contradictory message. Springsteen called the album’s eponymous song “one of my best and most misunderstood pieces of music.” It moves to the rhythm of pounding drums and a persistent synth chorus. Springsteen’s raspy voice can make it difficult to understand the lyrics, which express the anguish of a Vietnam veteran who regrets enlisting and faces unemployment at home.
However, the song’s chorus, which Springsteen sings proudly and loudly, with his fist raised, repeats “Born in the USA, I was born in the USA.” USA”). Springsteen was doing two things: criticizing the war and subsequent treatment of veterans and asserting his American birthright. The song was, in his words, “a vindication of a ‘critical’ patriotic voice along with the pride of having been born in that country.”
But his message did not reach many listeners, including conservative columnist George Will, whose wife had been given two tickets to a concert. Will later told his Washington Post readers that Springsteen “is no whiner, and the list of factory closures and other problems always seems punctuated by a cheerful statement: Born in the USA!”. A favorite of Reagan’s inner circle, Will was probably the origin of the president’s erroneous view that he and Springsteen shared the same American dream.
Springsteen wrote about ordinary people: bus drivers, factory workers, waitresses and police officers. Reagan needed his votes, but not all of them were his people. His tax policies benefited wealthy Americans and businesses but did little for working families and the poor. Springsteen said it in an interview in Rolling Stone at the end of 1984: “And you see Reagan’s re-election ads on TV, you know: ‘It’s morning in America’ (‘It’s morning in America’). And you say, well, it’s not morning in Pittsburgh. It’s not morning above 125th Street in New York. It’s midnight”.
In the same interview, Springsteen admitted that he had last voted in 1972, when his candidate, George McGovernlost to the Republican Richard Nixon. His preference, he said, was “human policy”: concrete actions with a direct effect on local communities. She put it into practice at the Pittsburgh concert that followed Reagan’s announcement. He made a $10,000 donation to a food bank for unemployed steel workers and urged his audience to also support the cause. Since then, his donations to local food banks have been common at his concerts.
Reagan He expressed his American dream in speeches and interviews. He believed that God had blessed America with freedom, a freedom embodied in the free market, limited government, and the freedom to live according to one’s religious beliefs. Springsteen has made his American dream the theme of his music: a nation that welcomes immigrants, condemns racism and opposes economic inequality. Its people remain united even – especially – in the midst of tragedy. Before Reagan cited him as a Republican inspiration, Springsteen was content to let his music convey his politics. Afterwards, he became more sincere, often improvising on one of his favorite phrases: “No one wins unless everyone wins.”
In 2004, he entered electoral politics, supporting the presidential candidacy of Democrat John Kerry. At a large rally in the Midwest, he warned that the ideals espoused in his music were in danger: “‘United we stand’ (‘united we will resist’)… and ‘one indivisible nation’ are not just slogans. “They must continue to be the guiding principles of our public life.” Four years later, Springsteen campaigned for Barack Obama and again in 2012. He supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, and in 2020 he covered “My Hometown” again for a campaign ad. Joe Biden.
In May 2024, the circle came full circle when donald trump, the Republican Party’s putative presidential candidate, mentioned Springsteen at a rally in New Jersey. But this time, not to praise him. He called Springsteen a “crack,” before claiming that the Boss and other “liberal singers” had voted for him in 2020. Trump then falsely added that his audience was larger than Springsteen’s.
But Springsteen made his opinion of the candidate clear in a 2020 interview, when Trump was running for re-election: “I don’t know if our democracy could withstand another four years in his custody.” Springsteen’s recent collection of R&B standards is titled Only the Strong Surviveand on the cover the rocker appears dressed in black, gray-haired but animated, looking directly at the viewer.
With the title, “Only the Strong Survive,” are you implying that Reagan’s evangelical vision and Darwinian approach to economics have crushed Springsteen’s own American dream? Or does his confident pose convey his belief that “there are still treasures to be exploited, for any working man who settles upon American soil”?
Originally published in The Conversation
