Born in The U.S.A. - Production

Production

In 1981, Springsteen was asked to write music for a film by Paul Schrader called Born in the U.S.A. (Schrader's movie would eventually be released 1987, entitled Light of Day, featuring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett). Shortly after, when Springsteen was working on a song titled "Vietnam," he glanced at the script and sang the title. The song, entitled as the work-in-progress movie, was already finished during the sessions of Springsteen's introspective album Nebraska, and Springsteen originally wanted to include it on the album. However, it was removed as it did not coincide with the dark feel of the rest of the songs. The same happened with other songs already cut around January or February 1982 – the energetic rocker "Cover Me" and the intimate "I'm on Fire". Between April and May, Springsteen composed and recorded a number of songs specifically intended for an album besides Nebraska at The Power Station in New York – "Born in the U.S.A.", "Darlington County", "Working on the Highway", "Downbound Train", "I'm Goin' Down" and "Glory Days". By mid-1982, most of the album was already recorded over three months before the commercial release of Nebraska. In May 1983, Springsteen cut another song, "My Hometown" at The Hit Factory and around the end of the year he taped the two final tracks originally considered for the album – "No Surrender" and "Bobby Jean".

A last moment addition was "Dancing in the Dark", a song specifically commissioned by Springsteen's producer and manager Jon Landau, who was satisfied with the material recorded but wanted a blockbuster first single, one that was fresh and directly relevant to Springsteen's current state of mind. Landau and Springsteen got into an argument, but later on Springsteen wrote "Dancing in the Dark" with some trepidation. His irked mood from the day's argument combined with the frustrations at trying to complete the album quickly poured out into the lyrics. As he wrote on his 1998 book Songs, "It went as far in the direction of pop music as I wanted to go – and probably a little farther." However, Springsteen noted that "My heroes, from Hank Williams to Frank Sinatra to Bob Dylan, were popular musicians. They had hits. There was value in trying to connect with a large audience."

One of the songs that was about to be left off the album was "No Surrender". Springsteen claimed that this was because "you don’t hold out and triumph all the time in life. (...) You compromise, you suffer defeat; you slip into life’s gray areas." Steven Van Zandt, convinced Springsteen 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."

Born in the U.S.A. became the first compact disc manufactured in the United States for commercial release when CBS and Sony opened its CD manufacturing plant in Terre Haute, Indiana in September 1984. Columbia Records' CDs previously had been imported from Japan.