It's almost hard to believe now that for much of his career Bruce Springsteen was a gigantic cult artist; a musician who could sell a couple of million records and fill hockey rinks, but who was was no more likely than Elvis Costello to get airplay on pop radio.

BORN IN THE USA was the album on which he flexed his muscles (literally) and changed all that. With song titles and choruses that seemed to reflect all that was good and strong in America, belying songs that were about everything that was going wrong, BORN IN THE USA was one of those cultural events that resonated with just about everybody--from both Republican and Democratic politicians, to Vietnam veterans (the title-track was a brutal account of a vet's homecoming), to social critics who found layers of meaning in these tales of disillusioned America, to dance-music DJs who found palpable beats in the dark passions of "Dancing In The Dark" and "Cover Me," to fist-raising pop fans who turned seven of these songs into top-10 singles and kept BORN IN THE USA in a year-long battle for the top spot on the album chart. It was as if no other album mattered that year.

What the critics say...

Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.116) - Ranked #85 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time"
Rolling Stone (11/89) - Ranked #6 in Rolling Stone's "100 Best Albums Of The Eighties" survey.
CMJ (1/5/04, p.14) - Ranked #7 in CMJ's "Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1984"