Bruce Springsteen's 'Born In The U.S.A.' at 40 : All Songs Considered : NPR
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Bruce Springsteen's 'Born In The U.S.A.' at 40 : All Songs Considered With the Fourth of July week here, we look at an album all about the messy, complicated and wonderful culture of America: Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A., which recently turned 40 years old.

All Songs Considered

'Born In The U.S.A.' at 40

'Born In The U.S.A.' at 40

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The iconic cover of Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A. Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Courtesy of the artist

The Fourth of July gives us a chance to celebrate everything that makes America a big, messy and complicated but wonderful place to be. So, this week, we thought we'd look back at an album that's all about this push and pull in our country: Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A., which recently turned 40 years old.

To do this, we dug back in NPR's archives to share a couple of pieces. One is the original review of the album that aired in June of 1984. We've also got a reappraisal from 2019 that digs into how and why the title track has been so wildly misunderstood over the years.

Then we close with something special that many fans don't know much about: the dance remixes. Around the same time that Born in the U.S.A. was released, producer Arthur Baker was hired to completely reimagine three tracks. Writer Caryn Rose, who wrote a piece about these remixes for NPR Music, breaks down how they came to be, why they were so polarizing and why they're so hard to find.