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Bruce Springsteen said his hit album Born in the U.S.A. “was not necessarily” the record that he “had planned on”
Springsteen will soon release a sprawling seven-album compilation of new music
The compilation will include music recorded between 1983 and 2018
Bruce Springsteen is admitting to once having doubts about his Grammy-nominated album Born in the U.S.A.
Springsteen, 75, spoke candidly about the 1984 project in a June 19 interview with Rolling Stone ahead of the upcoming release of his seven-album compilation Tracks II: The Lost Albums. The compilation, which includes music recorded between 1983 and 2018, arrives on June 27.
The “Dancing in the Dark” singer revealed that he recorded an entire album between Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A., which made deciding on the track list for the latter album more difficult.
“I enjoyed the recording and the experience of Nebraska, and thought I might continue in that vein with a small rhythm section, still very lo-fi, and a new group of songs,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone, referring to his paired-back 1982 folk album Nebraska. “At the time, I wasn’t sure where I was going with Born in the U.S.A. I had half the record, but I didn’t have the other half. And so it was just a record that happened in between those two records.”
In part due to this unique recording process, Springsteen revealed in the liner notes for Born in the U.S.A. that he wasn’t happy with the album upon its 1984 release.
“It was a record I put out. It became the record I made, not necessarily the record that I was interested in making. I was interested in taking Nebraska and making a full record that had somewhat that same feeling,” he elaborated.
Springsteen continued, “If you hear ‘My Hometown’ and you hear ‘Born in the U.S.A.,’ they were sort of the bookends I intended. And the rest of the stuff was … just what I had at the time. Those were the songs I wrote. Those were the songs I recorded.”
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He concluded by offering more insight into the creative process. “From conception to execution, it was not necessarily the record that in my mind I had planned on, but that’s the way creativity works. You go in the studio, you have an idea. It’s not necessarily what you come out with. So that was just the situation of that record for me personally.”
Springsteen added that he supposes he may have been looking for something “darker” and more tonally aligned with Nebraska at the time.
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Bruce Springsteen performs with The E Street Band at Autodromo Nazionale Monza
Born in the U.S.A. went on to be nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys, and become a cultural signifier for Springsteen’s songwriting. The album’s pop friendly productions blended with Springsteen’s gritty vocals brought Heartland rock to a wider audience.
The making of Nebraska is soon to be documented in the upcoming film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, which will star The Bear star, Jeremy Allen White, as Springsteen. The film will be released Oct. 24.
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