Bruce Springsteen has reacted to his song “Born in the USA” being “appropriated” in support of right-wing politicians.
Barack Obama can be heard asking the artist about the song in a clip from their Spotify podcast, Renegades: Born in the USA, released on Thursday. According to Rolling Stone, the clip is from the podcast’s final episode, due to air on 5 April.
Released in 1984, “Born in the USA” has been used and referenced by politicians on the right. In that context, the song has often been misconstrued as a patriotic anthem, when its lyrics are in fact a searing critique of the treatment of war veterans in the US.
“This is a song about the pain, glory, shame of identity and of place,” Springsteen told Obama.
“So it’s a complex picture of the country. Our protagonist is someone who has been betrayed by his nation and yet still feels deeply connected to the country that he grew up in.”
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The former US president then remarked that the song “ended up being appropriated as this iconic patriotic song, even though that was not necessarily [Springsteen’s] intentions”.
“But I think why the song has been appropriated, one was because it was so powerful, two was because its imagery was so fundamentally American,” Springsteen said.
“But it did demand of you to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at one time that you can both be very critical of your nation and very prideful of your nation simultaneously. And that is something that you see argued about to this very day.”
