Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

"Downbound Train" Immediately following the "future of rock 'n' roll" covers of "Time" and "Newsweek" in 1975, little old contrarian me settled into long-term resistance to Bruce Springsteen—Born to Run, the many pleasures of Darkness at the Edge of Town, "Because the Night," the "Street Hassle" cameo, and the outstanding high points of The River all notwithstanding. But his best and most popular album finally won me over. Following the model of Thriller or Rumours, it was a giant hit-making factory unto itself, eventually spawning some seven of them, all top 10. Some people, including little old contrarian me in some cases, would consider that a bug rather than a feature (hi Alanis!), but the sounds herein are so joyful, forthright, authentic, and stirring that I just don't know how anyone can resist it, and certainly I couldn't, especially after hearing it spread so persistently far and wide. I suppose I could do without the title song, which never really gets off the ground, or even up from the floor, too busy reveling in its bombast. And of my favorites here, the story of the birth of rock 'n' roll distilled to intuitional essence in the 1-2-3-4 of "Darlington County," "Working on the Highway," "Downbound Train," and "I'm on Fire," only the last successfully made its way to radio. I found out later that I actually worked into this album essentially the way it was recorded, across gaps over the space of a couple of years, by vinyl LP sides, absorbing the first first (lifting the needle over the first track). The second side, while its sound is more generally coherent, more pure E Street Band, at least in its '80s incarnation, came to me more in pieces assembling—the plainspoken courage of "No Surrender," the poignance of "Bobby Jean," the silly but affecting baseball pathos of "Glory Days," the poise and muscle of "Dancing in the Dark," until finally the sad elegy of "My Hometown" worked its way in too and erected a home in some suburban development of my heart, where it and the whole album resides still in a kind of timeless glow. It's one for the ages.