“Born in the U.S.A.” wasn’t an anthem of patriotism but a song calling out how Vietnam veterans were treated once they returned home. On the same album, Bruce Springsteen reflects on the racial tensions and economic collapse of his country on “My Hometown.”
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“I’ve spent most of my life measuring the distance between the American promise and American reality and for many Americans,” said Springsteen before performing his Darkness On The Edge Of Town track “The Promised Land.” He added, “The distance between that American promise and the reality has never been greater or more painful.”
Several years later, Springsteen introduced the story of “Johnny 99” on the Nebraska album, which follows the desperate measures of a man trying to survive without a job after his factory closes down.
Throughout his 50-year career, and countless stories of American life, Springsteen has delivered songs advocating against injustices, a better world, and change.
Here’s a look at just five socio-politically charged songs Springsteen released in each decade from the ’70s through 2010s.
1. “Lost in the Flood” (1973)
Written by Bruce Springsteen
On Springsteen’s 1973 debut, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., he tells the story of a Vietnam veteran who returns home to a country falling apart. The more apocalyptic track finds America ravaged by drugs, violence, and injustice that’s falling apart at multiple seams.
That pure American brother, dull-eyed and empty-faced
Races Sundays in Jersey in a Chevy stock Super eight
He rides ‘er low on the hip
On the side, he’s got “Bound for Glory”
In red, white, and blue flash paint
He leans on the hood telling racing stories
The kids call him Jimmy the Saint
Well, that blaze-and-noise boy
He’s gunnin’ that bitch loaded to blastin’ point
He rides headfirst into a hurricane and disappears into a point
And there’s nothin’ left
But some blood where the body fell
That is, nothin’ left that you could sell
Just junk all across the horizon
A real highwayman’s farewell
And I said, “Hey kid, you think that’s oil?
Man, that ain’t oil, that’s blood”
I wonder what he was thinking
When he hit that storm
Or was he just lost in the flood?
2. “Roulette” (1988)
Written by Bruce Springsteen
“Roulette” faces the effects of the Three Mile Island meltdown on March 28, 1979, which marked the worst accident in power plant history in the United States.
After playing the No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City in September 1979, Springsteen penned “Roulette,” which follows the story of someone forced to leave their life and home following a nuclear power emergency.
At first, Springsteen wasn’t ready to release the song and waited nearly a decade before it appeared as a B-side to “One Step Up” and later appeared on his 1998 box set Tracks.
I grew up here on this street
Where nothin’ moves, just a strange breeze
In a town full of worthless memories
There’s a shadow in my backyard
I’ve got a house full of things that I can’t touch
Well all those things won’t do me much good now
I was a fireman out at Riker’s, I did my job
Mister, I’ve been cheated, I feel like I’ve been robbed
I’m the big expendable, my life’s just canceled null and void
Well what you gonna do about your new boy
3. “The Ghost of Tom Joad” (1995)
Written by Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen’s 11th album The Ghost of Tom Joad is a collection of songs reflecting life in America and Mexico during the mid-1990s. He pulled the character of Tom Joad directly from John Steinbeck”s novel’s 1939 novel The Grapes Of Wrath. In the end, Joad gives his “I’ll be there” speech, which is cited in Springsteen’s lyrics.
Springsteen’s narrative is one of unity and how working together will always overcome all injustices.
Well the highway is alive tonight
Where it’s headed, everybody knows
I’m sitting down here in the campfire light
Waiting on the ghost of Tom Joad
Now Tom said, “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beating a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me, Mom, I’ll be there
Wherever somebody’s fighting for a place to stand
Or a decent job or a helping hand
Wherever somebody’s struggling to be free
Look in their eyes, Ma, and you’ll see me”
4. “Long Walk Home” (2007)
Written by Bruce Springsteen
At first, “Long Walk Home” starts like a song about the end of a relationship—Last night I stood at your doorstep, trying to figure out what went wrong / You just slipped something into my palm and you were gone—but moves right into his reflections on the state of the country in the late 2000s. It wasn’t the relationship that had issues, but America.
Released on Springsteen and the E Street Band’s 15th album, Magic, in 2007, “Long Walk Home” looked at the George Bush administration and was written as a reminder of the central values within America.
“In that particular song a guy comes back to his town and recognizes nothing and is recognized by nothing,” said Springsteen in 2007. “The singer in ‘Long Walk Home,’ that’s his experience. His world has changed. The things that he thought he knew, the people who he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers. The world that he knew feels totally alien. I think that’s what’s happened in this country in the past six years.”
Here everybody has a neighbor
Everybody has a friend
Everybody has a reason to begin again
My father said “Son, we’re lucky in this town,
It’s a beautiful place to be born.
It just wraps its arms around you,
Nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone”
“Your flag flyin’ over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone.
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t”
It’s gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
5. “We Are Alive” (2012)
Written by Bruce Springsteen
Along with the Celtic stomp of “Death to My Hometown,” addressing the collapse of the economy in 2008, and the Grammy-nominated “We Take Care of Our Own,” a call-out to peoples’ reluctance to help one another, Springsteen’s 2012 album Wrecking Ball penetrates heavier socio-political lanes.
Immigration, civil rights, and the struggles Americans have faced to live a better life are also the roots of the more folk- and mariachi-dipped closing “We Are Alive.” The lyrics follow a late-night walk in the cemetery where he confronts the ghosts of those who fought for America.
Wrecking Ball, which went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, also features the final appearance from long-time E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons, who died in 2011, on the title track and “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
“You can never go wrong in rock’n’roll when you’re pissed off,” said Springsteen in a 2012 interview. “My work has always been about judging the distance between American reality and the American Dream.”
There’s a cross up yonder on Calvary Hill
There’s a slip of blood on a silver knife
There’s a graveyard kid down below
Where at night the dead come to life
Well above the stars they crackle and fire
A dead man’s moon throws seven rings
We’d put our ears to the cold gravestones
This is the song they’d sing
We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our spirits rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
A voice cried I was killed in Maryland in 1877
When the railroad workers made their stand
I was killed in 1963
One Sunday morning in Birmingham
I died last year crossing the southern desert
My children left behind in San Pablo
Well they’ve left our bodies here to rot
Oh please let them know
Photo: Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images
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