Elton John, Adele and REM accomplished. Rihanna too and the Rolling Stones. When Donald Trump tried to make use of their music, Taylor Swift would probably do it too.
Many musicians say “no” when politicians try to make use of their music for election campaign purposes. But Bruce Springsteen is maybe probably the most famous naysayer of all.
In September 1984, Springsteen's “Born in the USA” was at the highest of the charts and Ronald Reagan, running for re-election against Walter Mondale, told an audience in New Jersey that he and the singer-songwriter shared the identical American dream.
Springsteen disagreed.
Three days later he performed in Pittsburgh, Springsteen spoke about his version of this dream.
“In the beginning, the idea was that we all live here a bit like a family, where the strong can help the weak and the rich can help the poor. You know, the American dream,” he said between songs.
“I don't think everyone would make a billion dollars, but I think everyone would get a chance and a chance to live a life with some decency and dignity.”
June 4, 2024 marks the fortieth anniversary of Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” best-selling album. In my latest book “Achieving the American Dream the Right Way: How the Media Brought Reagan's Evangelical Vision to the Mainstream“, I describe the president's try to use Springsteen's lyrics to support this vision, which incorporates welfare cuts, strengthening the military, and abolishing abortion – all positions dear to the religious right.
Springsteen had a unique vision, and Reagan's try to embrace it spurred the singer to be more political in his words and actions.
Blinded by the sunshine
The confusion surrounding “Born in the USA” is straightforward to know. Just have a look at the quilt of the album.
In the photo from behind, Springsteen looks up at a large American flag. The red and white stripes of the flag, Springsteen's white T-shirt, his blue jeans and his red baseball cap signal “America.”
So why a butt photo of the rocker in blue jeans, whose pose radiates youth, sex and self-confidence?
The photo is a Rorschach test and conveys a deliberately contradictory message.
Lawren/flickr, From
Spingsteen called
The album's eponymous title track is “one of my greatest and most misunderstood pieces of music.” It is carried by powerful, thumping drums and a haunting synthesizer chorus. Springsteen's gravelly voice could make it obscure the lyrics, which express the anguish of a Vietnam veteran regretting his enlistment and facing unemployment at home.
But the chorus of the song, which Springsteen sings proudly and loudly together with his fist raised, repeats “Born in the USA, I was born in the USA”
Springsteen did two things: He criticized the war and the next treatment of veterans and affirmed his American birthright. The song was in his words“a demand for a 'critical' patriotic voice along with pride of birth.”
Human touch
But the message escaped many listeners, including conservative columnist George Will, whose wife had been given two concert tickets.
Afterward, Will told his readers of the Washington Post that Springsteen “is no whiner and the list of closed factories and other problems always seems to be interrupted by a big, cheerful affirmation: 'Born in the USA!'”
Tony Bock/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Will, a favourite of Reagan's inner circle, was likely the explanation for the president's mistaken belief that he and Springsteen shared the identical American dream.
Springsteen wrote about peculiar people: bus drivers, factory staff, waitresses and cops. Reagan needed their votes, but not all of them were his people. His financial policies benefited wealthy Americans and corporations. but little for working families and the poor.
Springsteen said this in a Rolling Stone interview Late 1984: “And you see the Reagan re-election ads on TV – you know, 'It's morning in America.' And you say, well, it's not morning in Pittsburgh. It's not morning over 125th Street in New York. It's midnight.”
In the identical interview, Springsteen admitted that the last time he voted was in 1972, when his candidate George McGovern lost to Republican incumbent Richard NixonHe prefers “human politics” – concrete measures with a direct impact on local communities, he said.
He put this into practice on the concert in Pittsburgh following Reagan's salute. Make a donation of $10,000 to a food bank for unemployed steelworkers, he urged his audience to support the cause as well. Since then, his promotional campaigns for local food banks have been a daily a part of his live shows.
The Promised Land
Reagan articulated his American dream in speeches and interviews.
He believed that God had blessed America with freedom—a freedom embodied in free markets, limited government, and the liberty to live in keeping with one's religious beliefs.
Springsteen has made the American dream the topic of his music: a nation that welcomes immigrants, condemns racism and fights economic inequality, whose people stand together, even – and particularly – in times of tragedy.
Before Reagan named him a Republican muse, Springsteen was content to specific his politics through his music.
After that he was more open. often an allusion to a favourite sentence“Nobody wins unless everyone wins.”
In 2004, he entered electoral politics and supported John Kerry's presidential candidacy. At a big rally within the Midwesthe warned that the ideals he represents in his music are in peril: “'Together we are strong' … and 'an indivisible nation' are not just slogans. They must remain the guiding principles of our public life.”
Four years later, Springsteen campaigned for Barack Obama and again in 2012. In 2016, he supported Hillary Clinton and in 2020 he gave the song “My Hometown” a brand new name. for a Biden campaign ad.
No give up
Things got here full circle in May 2024 when Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, mentioned Springsteen by name at a rally in New Jersey. But this time, the candidate didn’t praise the Garden State troubadour.
He called Springsteen a “Madman”, before claiming that the Boss and other “liberal singers” voted for him in 2020 anyway. Trump then falsely added that his supporters outnumbered Springsteen’s.
But Springsteen made his opinion in regards to the candidate clear in an interview in 2020when Trump was running for re-election: “I don’t know if our democracy could endure another four years under his watch.”
Springsteen's latest collection of R&B standards is titled “Only the strong Survive”, and on the quilt the rocker is wearing black, grey but brave, and appears directly on the viewer.
Is the title implying that Reagan's evangelical vision and Darwinian approach to economics destroyed Springsteen's own American dream?
Or conveys his confident pose his conviction that there remains to be “A treasure available to every hard-working man who settles in America”?
image credit : theconversation.com