The Chorus that Cracked the Wall

In the years after the song appeared as the title track on Springsteen’s 1984 album, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” has been overanalyzed and overused in the service of competing politics.  Some Springsteen fans know the Boss meant the song as a critique of blind patriotism and hear the chorus as an expression of a working-class pride.  Other fans, including Ronald Reagan’s campaign staff that used the song without Springsteen’s permission, just hear the patriotism.  The song and its chorus nevertheless marked a turning point for audiences around the world – particularly in Germany.

On July 19, 1988, in a field next to a cycling track, Springsteen played this song live at the Radrennbahn in Weissensee, East Berlin about midway through an historic concert. The Springsteen concert, organized by Free German Youth officials (FDJ or Freie Deutsche Jugend), was originally intended to appease young German Democratic Republic (East German) rock fans. Looking back, critics and historians view Springsteen’s four-hour performance as a decisive “nail in the coffin” for East Germany because of the metaphorical crack it made in the Wall, which came down just 16 months later. Many of the hundreds of thousands of East Germans present walked over the barricades without tickets, and they formed a perfect audience for the complex message of “Born in the USA.”

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Springsteen’s rock concert did critique the West but it also gave East German youth a voice on the global stage. In East Berlin, Springsteen encouraged his audience to sing along as he played multiple choruses of “Born in the USA.” The official GDR television footage depicts the audience members swaying and the volume swelling as more and more voices join the song.  There is even a glimpse of a fan waving a large American flag as the broadcast quickly cuts away.  After the song, Springsteen gives a speech in German that includes these lines: “I’m not here for any government. I've come to play rock’n’roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.” Though many concertgoers did not understand the English words of Springsteen’s lyrics, their own histories and Springsteen’s speech in German afterwards made it possible for them to hear “Born in the USA” as both a critical take on US capitalism and an expression of a freedom—the power to make a critique—that they did not yet possess.