“Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen

"Born in the U.S.A." kicks down the door of Bruce Springsteen's 1984 album of the same name on Columbia, and it's one of the great bait-and-switches in rock: a chorus built to be bellowed from the rafters, wrapped around verses that tell the bleak story of a Vietnam veteran left stranded after the war. It dates to 1981, when Springsteen wrote it to be the theme of a movie Paul Schrader was mulling over, the project that became Light of Day, and he thanked Schrader in the album's liner notes. A solo acoustic demo followed on January 3, 1982, at his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, during the marathon session that produced most of Nebraska.

The band turned it into thunder, Max Weinberg's drums landing like artillery and Roy Bittan's synthesizer blaring over the top. Rolling Stone ranked it 275th among its 500 greatest songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.