Difford & Tilbrook charted with their self-titled album

Difford & Tilbrook Difford & Tilbrook

Released: June 1984 Charted: July 14, 1984 Peak: 55 US, 47 UK Sales (in millions): -- Genre: new wave

Tracks: Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Action Speaks Faster (4:50] Love’s Crashing Waves (3:08] (6/84, 32 CO, 57 UK) Picking Up the Pieces (3:18] On My Mind Tonight (4:08] Man for All Seasons (2:35] Hope Fell Down (4:22] (9/84, --) Wagon Train (3:36] You Can’t Hurt the Girl (3:01] Tears for Attention (4:50] The Apple Tree (4:24] Songs written by Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook. Total Running Time: 38:12 The Players: Chris Difford (vocals, rhythm guitar) Glenn Tilbrook (vocals, lead guitar) Keith Wilkinson (bass) Guy Fletcher (keyboards) Andy Duncan (drums, percussion) Larry Tollfree (percussion) Debbie Bishop (backing vocals)

Rating: 2.979 out of 5.00 (average of 15 ratings) Quotable: Difford & Tilbrook’s ”songwriting talents are as formidable as ever…but…[this] seems like a record without a center” – Christopher Connelly, Rolling Stone

About the Album: ”While Squeeze collapsed from physical and artistic exhaustion after Sweets from a Stranger, the band's songwriting duo soldiered on under the name Difford & Tilbrook for another release.” AMG “Song-wise [this] is a more consistent album than the schizophrenic Sweets from a Stranger.” AMG ”Chris Difford (guitar, lyrics) and Glenn Tilbrook (guitar, vocals, music) have spun ten widely varied pop songs, each one a showcase for Difford's warmhearted, wise-guy lyrics and Tilbrook’s fetching altar-boy tenor.” RS ”The addition of Keith Wilkinson's deep-bottomed bass and Debbie Bishop's snappy soprano backing vocals is a major improvement.” RS “There's also Andy Duncan (drums) [and] Guy Fletcher (keyboards).” JA They “set out to craft an '80s contemporary blue-eyed soul record, emulating all the requisite synth washes and drum machines from early-'80s Hall & Oates albums like H2O and Private Eyes…this was clearly meant as a shot at the big time…but the album tanked on the charts precisely because it still sounded like Squeeze.” AMG ”Difford and Tilbrook…shows that their songwriting talents are as formidable as ever,” RS but “characters, tones and themes seems to change from song to song on this record.” RS The album “seems like a record without a center, a surfeit of diversity with a dearth of direction.” RS Consequently “there's not quite enough urgency - or unity - to the songs here…No one's asking for an anthem…but songs with the spirit of ‘Another Nail in My Heart’ or the youthful wit of ‘Separate Beds’ would allow their more eclectic work to be that much more effective.” RS "Action Speaks Faster than words,’ declares the album's initial track, a fusion of British pop and American rap that would be more successful if Tilbrook's Anglo vowels (‘fah-stah’) didn't de-funk the enterprise. Given that song's message, it's ironic that the tune's charging, horn-fueled end…leads right into the ornate verbosity of the single, Love's Crashing Waves. Here, the talented Difford makes his cohort wrap his mouth around some tough lines: "Concocted rumours/By out-of-tuners/Are the must in love's concerto." Even the chorus' delightful zing can't quite redeem all of that verbiage.” RS “Difford & Tilbrook is chock full of Tilbrook's typically jaunty pop tunes. Picking Up the Pieces is one of his best; bright, enthusiastic and direct, the tune is enlivened all the more by a judiciously employed string section and by Bishop's chirping.” RS “Tilbrook has always evinced an affection for the husky, world-weary tones of the saloon singer, even though his voice is laden with fresh-faced innocence. For On My Mind Tonight, he adopts a tipsier tone - Paul McCartney at last call. The tune is almost a cocktail-lounge funk, and the singer languorously - and impotently - bemoans his lovelorn state: ‘The silence of the telephone doesn't bother me/But I wish that it would ring....I'm the man who would be king/The small hand’s on the five.’” RS “The LP lacks a track that would make a truly thrilling single, though…’Picking Up the Pieces’ and Hope Fell Down…come close.” RS The latter “reveals Difford's sassy wit: ‘Your ship came in/And your fanfare sunk it,’ he notes in a track that approximates the style of Squeeze's lone stateside hit, ‘Tempted.’” RS ”Difford displays his…facility for conjuring torrents of emotion - even the end of the world - in the jetsam of everyday life: the ash in the pages, the wax around the wick, the pen devoid of ink. In You Can’t Hurt the Girl, he weaves some intriguing ambiguity into a tale of an oft-heartbroken woman. ‘You can't hurt the girl,’ Tilbrook sings in the chorus, and it's not until the end that he adds a telling ‘...and not cry.’” RS ”The bounce” of the “Costello-ish foot-tapper” JA “Man for All Seasons will remind some of East Side Story’s ‘In Quintessence.’” RS “There are a couple of prettily harmonized love songs (You Can't Hurt the Girl; Tears for Attention)” JA “and it's nice to hear Difford's low buzz of a voice at the end of the uptempo throwaway Wagon Train.” RS “Difford's dexterous style works best on” RS the “fascinatingly creepy” JA “The Apple Tree, as he develops a series of harrowing images in a post-nuclear-holocaust scene: the abandoned house with the coffee still on, the fingernail scratches on the church door. ‘It's a silence you can see,’ he writes, ‘hearing shadows behind me.’ Musically, Tilbrook is equal to the challenge. His swirling, eerie arrangement - reminiscent of [The Beatles’] ‘A Day in the Life’ - skews the deceptively commonplace melody line and builds the track to its dramatic conclusion.” RS “Over time, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook would prove to be the only constant members of Squeeze anyway, making Difford & Tilbrook the lost Squeeze album and the missing puzzle piece between Sweets from a Strangerand Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti. Despite being far from the duo's best work (and it's certainly the rarest), serious fans will want to seek this out.” AMG

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Squeeze DMDB encyclopedia entry for Chris Difford DMDB encyclopedia entry for Glenn Tilbrook AMG All Music Guide review by Chris Woodstra JA John Alroy, Wilson & Alroy’s Record Reviews RS RollingStone.com review by Christopher Connelly, originally in print issue #424. Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 7/23/2008; last updated 2/7/2022.

Prince hit #1 with “When Doves Cry”

When Doves Cry Prince

This post has been moved here.

Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. hit #1

Born in the U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen

Released: June 4, 1984 Peak: 17 US, 15 UK, 113 CN, 18 AU, 18 DF Sales (in millions): 17.0 US, 0.9 UK, 30.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Click on a song titled for more details. Born in the U.S.A. [4:39] Cover Me [3:26] Darlington County [4:48] Working on the Highway [3:11] Downbound Train [3:35] I’m on Fire [2:36] No Surrender [4:00] Bobby Jean [3:46] I’m Goin’ Down [3:29] Glory Days [4:15] Dancing in the Dark [4:01] My Hometown [4:33] For other songs from this era, check out the DMDB pages for LA Garage Sessions ‘83 and Born in the U.S.A. (extended). Total Running Time: 46:58 The Players: Bruce Springsteen (vocals, guitar) Roy Bittan (keyboards, backing vocals) Clarence Clemons (saxophone, percussion, backing vocals) Danny Federici (keyboards, backing vocals) Garry Tallent (bass, backing vocals) Steven Van Zandt (guitar, mandolin, harmony vocals) Max Weinberg (drums, backing vocals)

Rating: 4.597 out of 5.00 (average of 29 ratings) Quotable: “The album that catapulted Bruce Springsteen from cult-favorite critics’ darling to stadium-rocking global superstar.” – Jason Warburg, The Daily Vault Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Following Nebraska It’s one of the most fascinating eras for one of rock’s greatest stars. After Bruce Springsteen went to #1 with his fifth album, 1980’s The River and achieved his first top-ten hit with “Hungry Heart,” he sat at the pinnacle of the rock world. Instead of following it up with another slab of songs destined for play on classic rock radio for decades to come, he delivered 1982’s Nebraska, a “bleak acoustic album” RS of demos he’d recorded in his bedroom. “Springsteen had become increasingly downcast as a songwriter during his recording career, and his pessimism bottomed out” AM with this collection of “plainspoken, folk-derived tunes.” CD The album was hailed by critics but fans had to be worried that their beloved rock hero might have mellowed out too much. Then in 1984, Bruce Springsteen delivered the biggest-selling album of his career with Born in the U.S.A. On the strength of seven top-ten pop hits, it 30 million copies worldwide and “catapulted Bruce Springsteen from cult-favorite critics’ darling to stadium-rocking global superstar.” DV “With Born in the U.S.A., all those predictions from a decade earlier – that Springsteen was the future of rock – had come true.” AZ “Seemingly, the whole world sang along.” CD At Least Two Albums in the Can As die-hard fans know, Springsteen has a proclivity for recording a lot of stuff in an obsessive need to get the tone of an album just right. At the end of the summer of 1982, Bruce had over 40 songs on tape, including 15 from the January 3 sessions that produced most of what appeared on Nebraska and full-band tracks recorded from April to May that included eight of the songs which ended up on Born in the U.S.A. 33-79 They clearly and “enough tracks on hand for a terrific rock ‘n’ roll record…[and] for a first-rate country/folk record.” 33-80 As we know, Bruce opted to release the Nebraska album first. By the time he released Born in the U.S.A. in 1984, he’d recorded another whole album’s worth of material – LA Garage Sessions ‘83 – but it didn’t see release until 2025 when Bruce released a box set of seven “lost albums.” It served as the perfect bridge between Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. It shows the shift wasn’t as Jekyll-and-Hyde as it once appeared. From Blue-Collar Rocker to Pop Star Michael Jackson paved the way for albums with multiple hit singles (seven top 10s) with 1982’s Thriller. The next artist to do so was not one most would have guessed – Bruce Springsteen. While “The Boss” had earned a reputation as a live performer and his albums had become platinum sellers, he wasn’t one to rack up top 10 hits. Prior to his 1984 Born in the U.S.A. album, he’d had six songs total hit the Billboard Hot 100, and only “Hungry Heart” made it to the top 10. However, with Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen joined the elite club of having an album which produced seven top 10 hits. Springsteen crafted a very different image of a pop star than the glitzy quality that surrounded everything Michael Jackson did. Springsteen was a “sweaty, stadium rocker, a Rambo of the six-string” TB-A who churned out “radio-ready populist anthems.” AZ about “nostalgia and sentimentality.” AM He still sang “tales of disillusioned America,” CD but “Springsteen translated his skill with personal, raw, folk-inspired material into full-title, electric rock & roll” TC that featured “big, sing-along choruses” CD with “galloping rhythms…set off by chiming guitars.” AM The “album is a glorious grab bag of– his best display of pure pop songwriting ever.” AZ The “unifying concept of the Born in the U.S.A.: pop pleasure.” 33-53 These were songs that “grabbed the listener’s ear, snuck inside the brain and wouldn’t leave.” 33-53 This “is his most rhythmically propulsive, vocally incisive, lyrically balanced, and commercially undeniable album.” RC “As a total package, combining words and music, drama and comedy, writing and performing, singing and playing, Born in the U.S.A. is, quite simply, the best album of Springsteen’s career.” 33-53 The Music He’d learned a thing or two from the stripped-down songs of Nebraska. He opted “for a leaner band sound and more straightforward song structures when he returned to electric rock.” TB-A “Born in the U.S.A. was as lean and muscular as Springsteen himself, trading in the E Street Band’s over-the-top saxophone-and-piano sound of old for a sleeker, forward-driving guitar-and-synthesizer feel.” CD “The aural vibrancy…reminds…that what teenagers loved about rock and roll wasn’t that it was catchy or even vibrant but that it just plain sounded good.” RC The music “incorporates new electronic textures while keeping as its heart all of the American rock & roll from the early Sixties…The music was born in the U.S.A.: Springsteen ignored the British Invasion and embraced instead the legacy of Phil Spector’s releases, the sort of soul that was coming from Atlantic Records and especially the garage bands that had anomalous radio hits. He's always chased the utopian feeling of that music, and here he catches it with a sophisticated production and a subtle change in surroundings.” RS The Storytelling “Springsteen has always been able to tell a story better than he can write a hook, and these lyrics are way beyond anything anybody else is writing.” RS “Not counting the title powerhouse, the best songs slip by at first because their tone is so lifelike” RC and “they’re sung in such an unaffected way that the starkness stabs you.” RS This “is a bittersweet and often despairing look at what happens when maturity eventually sets in.” DV “The characters are no longer scruffy hoods with colorful names like the Magic Rat, they’re nameless working stiffs” DV who “dread getting stuck in the small towns they grew up in almost as much as they worry that the big world outside holds no possibilities.” RS They brood “over unfulfilled dreams…and unfulfilling relationships…or indulging in premature nostalgia over old times…and old friends.” DV “Though the characters are dying of longing for some sort of payoff from the American dream, Springsteen’s exuberant voice and the swell of the music clues you that they haven’t given up.” RS The Cover Photographer Annie Leibowitz shot the cover for Born in the U.S.A. Springsteen rejected her “favorite shot – the singer in midair leap before the flag; that shot would become the cover of the title-track single. Instead he chose a more subversive image: a close-up of the singer’s blue-jeaned ass, with a hole in one rear pocket and a red baseball cap dangling from the other, juxtaposed against the flag.” 33-112 It made for a perfect image of the picture of the American dream through the eyes of its blue-collar-working population. The Songs Here’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs.

Born in the U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 1/3/1982 (original demo), electric version: April 27-28, 1982 and May 3, 1982 at the Power Station in New York First Charted: 6/23/1984 as an album cut Released: 10/30/1984 as a single, Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), Greatest Hits (1995), Live in New York City (2000), The Essential (2003), Greatest Hits (2009), The Collection (2012), Chapter and Verse (2016), Best of (2024); 1982 demo: Tracks (box set, 1998) B-Side: “Shut Out the Light” Peak: 9 BB, 8 CB, 12 GR, 10 RR, 8 AR, 5 UK, 11 CN, 2 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.6 UK, 4.3 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 116.75 video, 556.67 streaming Covered by: Arcade Fire (2009), John Mellencamp (2009), Bob Walkenhorst (2011), Neil Young (2013) About the Song: Springsteen kicked off the Born in the U.S.A. album with one of the most famously misunderstood songs in rock history. The song was interpreted as a “patriotic battle cry” SS about the pride of being an American by those “who heard the anthemic chorus but not the bitter verses.” WK “The witless wonders of the Reagan regime attempted to co-opt…[it] as an election-year campaign song.” AM The fact that it was “a brutal account” CD of “the disenfranchisement of a lower-class Vietnam vet” AM “whose country forgot him” AZ escaped their attention completely. Two scholars wrote in the journal American Quarterly about how the song’s exploration of “the effect of blind nationalism upon the working class.” WK The song tapped into an important and complex ethos. “Just as no one chooses to be born, no one chooses to be born in the U.S.A. But if you are, the rest of your life is profoundly shaped by that circumstance…You absorb an expectation that the American dream is your birthright. You are ushered into a reality where that dream often goes unfulfilled.” 33-19 Springsteen wrote the song in 1981 under the title “Vietnam,” SF inspired by Born on the Fourth of July, a memoir by Vietnam vet and antiwar activist Ron Kovic. SS When Paul Schrader sent him a script for a movie called Born in the U.S.A. “about a rock band struggling with life and religion” SF Springsteen changed the title of the song. The film – starring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett – didn’t get released until 1987. Springsteen had already used the “Born in the U.S.A.” song by then but wrote a new title song for the retitled movie – Light of Day. Springsteen first recorded the song as a rough, acoustic demo while he was making the home recordings that became the 1982 Nebraska album. You can hear that demo on the 1998 Tracks box set. However, he decided it didn’t fit with the rest of the material. “The words were right, but there was still something wrong with the music…Instead of a nonstop turntable of words, the vocal needed pauses, so the words could sink in. It needed to build the tension in the verses with a melody that never lands on the root and then release that tension in the chorus. It needed the stomping beat and the call-toarms hook of a rock ‘n’ roll anthem.” 33-30 The E Street Band recorded an electric version that had “unquestionable musical potency” DV with unparalleled ferocity and single-mindedness.” TB-A Springsteen’s “voice…[is] raw, angry, worn right down to the bone” SS and accompanied by “Roy Bittan’s martial synthesizer.” DM “Max Weinberg’s thundering drum fills at the climax of the song still give…chills after hundreds of listens.” DV Weinberg said, “I remember that night as greatest single experience I’ve ever had recording, and it set the tone for the whole record.” TB-A It only took two takes to get the song down. Manager Jon Landau said, “It was the most exciting thing that ever happened in a studio.” 33-49 The song hit the mainstream rock chart soon after the album’s release but wasn’t officially released as a single until October. By that time, Springsteen had already hit the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Dancing in the Dark” and “Cover Me.” “Born in the U.S.A.” became the third of the album’s seven top 10 hits. Regarding the song’s popularity, Springsteen said, “I had written a catchy song…probably one of my best since ‘Born to Run.’ I knew it was going to catch people – but I didn’t know it was going to catch them like that, or that it was going to be what it was.” TB-A

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Cover Me Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 1/25/1982 at the Hit Factory in New York First Charted: 6/23/1984 as an album cut Released: 7/31/1984 as a single, Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986) B-Side: “Jersey Girl” Peak: 7 BB, 10 CB, 9 GR, 6 RR, 2 AR, 16 UK, 12 CN, 17 AU, 4 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, -- UK, 1.04 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 11.69 video, 40.81 streaming About the Song: Cover Me originated as “Drop on Down and Cover Me.” He crafted the song after he was asked to write for Donna Summer’s new album. She wanted to move in a rock direction and Bruce was interested in attracting more of an R&B audience, as he had with the Pointer Sisters #2 version of his song “Fire” in 1978 and Gary “U.S.” Bonds had done with the Springsteen-penned songs “This Little Girl” (#11, 1981) and “Out of Work” (#21, 1982). 33-74 He “jettisoned the original (actually superior) melody and concentrated on getting a disco or funk groove going on his guitar.” 33-76 Indeed, the version recorded by Springsteen throbs with “heavy-guitars-over-a-disco-beat.” DV It was so compelling that Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, was “convinced the song was a surefire hit…[and] he argued against giving the song away to Summer.” 33-76 Springsteen kept the song and gave Summer a song called “Protection” that he wrote during the sessions for The River. 33-76 “The band finds the right feeling of paranoia for [this], the lone song to resurrect that shrieking, ‘Badlands’-style guitar.’” RS “Everything was subsumed in the groove.” 33-76 Arthur Baker, the hip-hop producer for Afrika Bambaata’s “Planet Rock,” was even asked to remix the song. He “replicated the original groove on programmed synths” for a “radical restructuring of the son, but it revealed the heavy black influence at the core of Springsteen’s music.” 33-77

Darlington County Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/13/1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986) About the Song: On the “classic buddy/road song” DV two friends “leave New York for jobs in South Carolina.” 33-63 Springsteen explores “the futility of a macho spree without undercutting its exuberance.” RC “Two guys pull into a hick town begging for work.” RS “The protagonist’s best friend ends up ‘handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper’s Ford.’” 33-68 Nonetheless, “Springsteen is whooping with sha-la-las in the chorus. He may shove his broody characters out the door and send them cruising down the turnpike, but he gives them music they can pound on the dashboard to.” RS

Working on the Highway Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 4/30/1982 and 5/6/1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986) About the Song: “The fast-stepping” RC Working on the Highway has “a tight, frenetic Elvis Costello arrangement.” DV It “whips into an ecstatic rocker that tells a funny story, hand-claps keeping the time about crime and punishment.” RS “You get…a vivid sense of these characters…because Springsteen gives them voices a playwright would be proud of.” RS “To let us know the guy’s in love,” RS all Springsteen has to say is, “‘One day I looked straight at her and she looked straight back.’” RS The song originated out of the demo sessions on January 3, 1982, that produced most of the Nebraska album. The song, originally called “Child Bride,” was a “melancholy” 33-52 but “beautifully written lyric” 33-52 about a “a young man who waved the red flag at a highway construction site even as he dreamed of a yong girl he had met at an American Legion Hall dance.” 33-52 Her father says she’s too young to marry, but the couple run off and eloped in Florida. “It ends with the narrator dreaming in jail as he once had on the job.” 33-52 Springsteen then reworked the song under the new title Working on the Highway. He dramatically edited the lyrics and tightened the narrative, but lost “some of the best imagery.” 33-52 He “replaced the folk-ballad music with a snappy guitar riff in the Buddy Holly popabilly mode.” 33-52 At the end, the narrator is back where he started – but this time “as part of a prison road gang rather than a construction crew.” 33-52 “It was no longer the literary gem ‘Child Bride’ had been, but it was a much more pleasurable pop song.” 33-53

Downbound Train Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: April 27-28, 1982 and May 3, 5, and 6, 1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: Born in the U.S.A. (1984) About the Song: “In the saddest song he’s ever written, Downbound Train, a man who’s lost everything pours his story, while, behind him, long, sorry notes on a synthesizer sound just like heartache. ‘I had a job, I had a girl,’ he begins, then explains how everything’s changed: ‘Now I work down at the car wash, where all it ever does its rain.’ It's a line Sam Shepard could’ve written: so pathetic and so funny, you don’t know how to react.” RS The original version of the song was “a breathlessly frantic rockabilly arrangement” 33-50 but it “was retrofitted with completely different music that liberated its lyrics.” 33-50 Springsteen overdubbed the song with a “eavily echoed, wordless moan…which echoed the lyric’s reference to the train’s ‘whistle whining’ [and] captured the lyric’s mood of doom far better than the herky-jerky guitar.” 33-50

I’m on Fire Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/11/1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: 2/6/1985 as a single, Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), Greatest Hits (2009) B-Side: “Johnny Bye-Bye” Peak: 6 BB, 5 BA, 8 CB, 4 GR, 6 RR, 6 AC, 4 AR, 5 UK, 12 CN, 12 AU, 4 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 0.6 UK, 3.07 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 100.69 video, 634.09 streaming Covered by: Tori Amos (1994), Johnny Cash (2000), Gaslight Anthem (2008), Ben Harper & Jennifer Nettles (2009), Mumford & Sons (2013) About the Song: Springsteen says he wrote the song as an imitation of Johnny Cash & the Tennessee Three. 33-73 As far as recording it, one night when Springsteen, Max Weinberg, and Roy Bittan were in the studio while the rest of the band went to go eat, Springsteen suggested trying out a new song in his notebook called I'm on Fire. They recorded it so quickly that they had it finished before the rest of the band was back from dinner. 33-49 It explains why the song features “just a light rattle of drums, faint organ and quiet, staccato guitar notes.” RS The song “marked new territory for Springsteen; never had he dealt so directly with sex.” 33-50 It is “a smoldering look at unrequited passion.” DV “The tight-lipped character who sings…practically whispers about the desire that's eating him up. ‘Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul,’ he rasps.” RS “His lust seem ominous: you picture some pock-marked Harry Dean Stanton type, lying, too wired to sleep, in a motel room.” RS

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

No Surrender Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: October 25-27, 1983 at the Hit Factory in New York Charted: 6/16/1984 as an album cut Released: Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986) Peak: 29 AR, 7 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: “No Surrender is a friendship anthem for the ages” DV with “the uplifting sweep of his early anthem ‘Thunder Road.’” RS It is “one of the best tunes the man has ever written.” DV Personally, I think the slowed-down version on the Live 1975/1985 box set packs even more of a wollop. The song “was built atop the chassis from the jangly, galloping Brothers Under the Bridge. The earlier song had been a throwback to his old mid-70s romanticism, but the lyrics about drag racers didn’t seem as strong as the music.” 33-55 He wrote “a new set of words, steeped in the same romanticism.” 33-55 The lines “We busted out of class / Had to get away from those fools” and “We learned more from a three-minute record / Than we ever learned in school” “became two of Springsteen’s most famous, most controversial lines.” 33-55 They were famous “because they echoed the experience of every listener who ever felt more stimulated – intellectually as well as emotionally – by what was sung on the radio and the stereo than by antying that was said in the classroom.” 33-55 They were “controversial because they came perilously close to recommending that students should ignore their books and teachers and give all their attention to rock ‘n’ roll.” 33-56 As Springsteen explained, “There are a lot of people who just fall through the bottom of the educational system…the kids themselves don’t know how to open up their own consciousness. Which is what rock ‘n’ roll did for me…It gave me a much wider sense of awareness.” 33-56 However, Springsteen said he didn’t originally intend the song to be on Born in the U.S.A. “but Steve Van Zandt convinced me otherwise…He argued that the portrait of friendship and the song’s expression of the inspirational power of rock music was an important part of the picture.” 33-104

Bobby Jean Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 7/28/1983 and 10/10/1983 at the Hit Factory in New York Charted: 6/23/1984 as an album cut Released: Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986) Peak: 36 AR, 14 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: This “is a quieter, more accepting complement to the loud and defiant ‘No Surrender’ in much the same way that ‘My Hometown’ was to ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ The song is ostensibly addressed to an old girlfriend who had to leave suddenly but it could easily be applied to the loss of any close friend.” 33-97 It serves as an ode to long-time guitarist Steve Van Zandt, who’d just left the band. Certainly lyrics like “‘Maybe you’ll be out there on that road somewhere/ In some motel room there’ll be a radio playing and you’ll hear me sing this song/ Well, if you do, you’ll know I’m thinking of you and all the miles in between’” RS “may put a lump in your throat” RS but thanks to a “wall of sound with a soaring saxophone solo…the music says, Walk tall or don’t walk at all.” RS

I’m Goin’ Down Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: May 12-13, 1982 at the Hit Factory First Charted: 8/2/1985 as an album cut Released: 8/27/1985 as a single, Born in the U.S.A. (1984) B-Side: “Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart” Peak: 9 BB, 9 CB, 10 GR, 9 RR, 9 AR, 23 CN, 41 AU, 5 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 49.59 video, 52.50 streaming Covered by: Vampire Weekend (2010) About the Song: “A great dancer himself, Springsteen puts an infectious beat under his songs. In the wonderfully exuberant I'm Goin' Down, a hilarious song that gets its revenge, he makes a giddy run of nonsense syllables out of the chorus while drummer Max Weinberg whams out a huge backbeat.” RS “Pink Cadillac” was bumped from the album in favor of “I’m Goin’ Down.” 33-104

Glory Days Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen (see lyrics here) Recorded: 5/5/1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: 5/13/1985 as a single, Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Greatest Hits (1995), The Essential (2003), Greatest Hits (2009), Best of (2024) B-Side: “Stand on It” Peak: 5 BB, 4 BA, 9 CB, 4 GR, 3 RR, 3 AR, 17 UK, 17 CN, 29 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.2 UK, 1.34 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 77.34 video, 278.09 streaming Covered by: Jennifer Nettles About the Song: “Glory Days” became Bruce Springsteen’s fifth top-10 hit from 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. blockbuster. Cash Box described “Glory Days” as “rowdy, raucous and set for good AOR and CHR airplay…with something for everybody and for all markets.” WK It “employed Springsteen’s trademark disaffection, yet it came across as a couch potato’s drunken lament.” AM The song “took the key line from ‘Rosalita,’ ‘someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny,’ and turned it into a whole song.” 33-39 “Glory Days” “acknowledges that…getting old is a good joke.” RC “The music is perfect for the story; the bouncy beat the dominating carnival-like organ riff and the frozen double-take stop at the end of each chorus.” 33-38 Springsteen sings of a man looking back at the people he knew in high school. In the first verse, the narrator runs into an old friend at a bar who used to be the star pitcher in high school and they reminisce about the “glory days.” It is an autobiographical reflection on Springsteen crossing paths with a former Little League baseball teammate named Joe DePugh. WK They really did cross paths in 1973 when DePugh was walking into a bar while Springsteen was walking out. They went back in and reminisced until the bar closed. SF In the second verse, the narrator visits a girl he knew in high school who is now a divorced mother. She’d also rather talk about the “glory days” than her problems. Finally, the narrator proclaims in the third verse that he hopes he won’t end up dwelling on the past but admits “I probably will.” In the liner notes for his Greatest Hits album, he says, “The first verse actually happened. The second verse mostly happened, and the third verse, of course, is happening now.” The video played on the baseball aspect of the song, casting Springsteen as the song’s protagonist practicing his pitching at the beginning and end of the video. Most of the rest of the video is comprised of shots of Springsteen performing the song in a bar with the E Street Band. The video features Steven Van Zandt, who’d left the band the year before, and Nils Lofgren and Patti Scialfa, who weren’t with the band when the song was initially recorded. WK

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Dancing in the Dark Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen (see lyrics here) Recorded: 2/14/1984 at the Hit Factory in New York Released: 5/9/1984 as a single, Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Greatest Hits (1995), The Essential (2003), Greatest Hits (2009), The Collection (2012), Best of (2024) B-Side: “Pink Cadillac” Peak: 2 BB, 12 CB, 12 GR, 11 RR, 16 AR, 4 UK, 3 CN, 5 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 4.0 US, 1.8 UK, 7.37 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 508.59 video, 1045.56 streaming Covered by: Big Daddy (1985, #21 UK), Tegan & Sara (2006), John Legend (2013), Lucy Dacus (2019) About the Song: “Dancing in the Dark” was the first of Springsteen’s seven top-10 hits from the Born in the U.S.A. album. It is his “best…pure pop songwriting ever” AZ and, not surprisingly, his highest-charting song. It spent four weeks at #2; three of those were behind another artist who was achieving blockbuster status with a multi-hit album – Prince, with 1984’s Purple Rain and specifically the song “When Doves Cry.” While the song didn’t make it to the top in the United States, it did top the charts in Belgium and the Netherlands. In Australia, it peaked at #5 but went on to be the highest-selling single of the year. WK It also won a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance and was voted Single of the Year in the Rolling Stone readers’ poll. Humorously enough, Springsteen wrote the song when his manager, Jon Landau, wasn’t convinced the album had a single yet. He asserted that the album still needed “a song that didn’t look to the past like ‘No Surrender’ or ‘Bobby Jean,’ that didn’t look out to the wider world like ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ or ‘My Hometown,’ a song the revealed where Springsteen himself was in the here and now.” 33-102 Springsteen’s reaction was, “Look, I’ve written seventy songs. You want another one, you write it.” WK Despite that, he wrote the song in a single night in his hotel room. The song sports “as unlikely a lyric for a hit single as the world might ever see.” DV “The kid who dances in the darkness here is practically choking on the self-consciousness of being sixteen. ‘I check my look in the mirror / I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face,’ he sings. ‘Man, I ain't getting nowhere just living in a dump like this.’ He turns out the lights…to escape in the fantasy of the music on the radio [and find] a release from all the limitations he was born into.” RS It also managed to capture Springsteen’s own frustration about being tasked to write a hit single. WK “The deep, philosophical message was lost on most listeners who were entranced by the catchy beat.” SF Regarding that beat, this was “Springsteen’s most successful attempt at a modern R&B sound.” 33-103 “The groove and the vocal…sound relaxed and comfortable, as if Springsteen had finally figured out how to sing a Luther Vandross song. [Drummer Max] Weinberg plays a beat so steadily it could have come from a drum machine.” 33-103 The song also features “modern synths played by E Street keyboardist Roy Bittan.” RS The straight performance video for the song was shot at the Saint Paul Civic Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on June 28 and 29, 1984. In the video, Springsteen plucks a fan from the audience to dance with him on stage. While he’d been told who he was supposed to pick, he himself didn’t know it was professional actress Courteney Cox. She had already been in As the World Turns and went on to even greater fame on Family Ties and Friends. “Dancing in the Dark” won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Stage Performance.

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My Hometown Bruce Springsteen

Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen (see lyrics here) Recorded: 6/29/1983 at the Hit Factory in New York Released: 11/21/1985 as a single, Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), Greatest Hits (1995), Live in New York City (2000); early version: LA Garage Sessions ‘83 (1983/2025) Covered by: U2 (1985), Emmylou Harris (2013), Neil Young (2014) B-Side: “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (live)” Peak: 6 BB, 7 CB, 6 GR, 7 RR, 1 AC, 6 AR, 9 UK, 16 CN, 47 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.25 UK, 1.34 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 119.92 video, 91.33 streaming About the Song: Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” was the seventh single released from his 1984 Born in the U.S.A. album – and the seventh to reach the top 10, equally a feat only accomplished previously by Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Billboard called it a “contemplative, insightful single.” WK It initially looks like it will be a nostalgic look at childhood. The narrator “remembers sitting on his father’s lap and steering the family Buick as they drove proudly through town; but the boy grows up, and the final scene has him putting his own son on his lap for a last drive down a street that's become a row of vacant buildings. ‘Take a good look around,’ he tells his boy, repeating what his father told him, ‘this is your hometown.’” RS “The singing is a bit resigned, as if acknowledging that the town is not much of a prize, but still it is the boy’s hometown, and there’s something comforting in knowing that you have a town that’s yours.” 33-95 The song delves into the racial violence and economic depression which the narrator saw in his adolescence and young adulthood. WK Springsteen drew on the tension he saw in his own hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, offering what Cash Box called a “tender and somber look at the real American hometown.” WK The song’s bleak portrait of the life of the working class extended Springsteen’s audience with the common man, especially during the Reagan era as many small towns were falling apart. SF In a case of life mirroring art, the 3M company closed its factory in Freehold, echoing the line in the song about “they’re closing down the textile mill.” SF During sessions for The River, Springsteen wrote “From Small Things Big Things Come.” It didn’t make the album but it was recorded by Dave Edmunds. Springsteen recycled the song’s riff several times – for “Don’t Back Down,” “The Klansman,” and My Hometown.” 33-93 “One can easily imagine Springsteen sitting alone in his Los Angeles writing room…puzzling out his complicated feelings about home. Was it something to remember fondly or was it something that he was ‘born to run’ from? Neither of those choices was true to the complexity of the situation.” 33-93 “He wasn’t looking for music as bleak as Nebraska’s, but he didn’t want anything that would encourage nostalgia either.” 33-94 He “settled on a midtempo, hymnlike melody…The song unfolds as if at a church funeral, where the songs must reflect sympathy as well as sorrow.” 33-94 An earlier, quieter version with some slightly different lyrics appears on LA Garage Sessions ‘83. It offers some insight into how different the song could have been.

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Notes: In honor of the album’s 40th anniversary in 2024, a live album was released from the Born in the U.S.A. 1984-85 tour that included all of the songs from the album plus “Pink Cadillac,” “Stand on It,” and “Seeds.” Resources/Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by William Ruhlmann AZ Amazon.com review by Daniel Durchholz RC Robert Christgau review CD CdUniverse.com DV Daily Vault review by Jason Warburg TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Pages 471-2. 33 Geoffrey Himes (2005). 33 1/3: Born in the U.S.A.. Bloomsbury Academic: New York, NY. MG Philippe Margotin & Jean-Michel Guesdon (2020). Bruce Springsteen – All The Songs: The Story Behind Every Track. Cassel (an imprint of Octopus Publishing Group Ltd.): Great Britain. DM Dave Marsh (1989). The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made. New American Library: New York, NY. Pages 92-3. RS Rolling Stone review by Debby Miller. Originally in 426/427: July 19/August 2, 2002 print issue. SF Songfacts page for “Dancing in the Dark” SF Songfacts page for “Born in the U.S.A.” SF Songfacts page for “Glory Days” SF Songfacts page for “My Hometown” SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Page 335. TB-A Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 225. TB-S Thunder Bay Press (2006). Singles: Six Decades of Hot Hits & Classic Cuts. Outline Press Ltd.: San Diego, CA. Page 214. WK Wikipedia page for “Dancing in the Dark” WK Wikipedia page for “Born in the U.S.A.” WK Wikipedia page for “Glory Days” WK Wikipedia page for “My Hometown” Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/23/2008; last updated 8/3/2025.