Springsteen "Born in the USA"

       This week in class we learned about protest music and more specifically Bruce Springsteen. One of his most famous songs "Born in the USA" is a popular protest song where the real message is over looked by the tone and most distinct lyrics of the song. I myself didn't even know that this was a protest song and it was interesting to me to learn about these songs and their message that most people don't even know about.

       The most famous lyric from the song, which I'm sure almost every person knows is "Born in the USA, I was born in the USA." When listening to this song and people hear this lyric they disregard the rest of the song and its actual meaning. This lyric provides a sense of pride and americanism, that when people hear this song they just can't turn it off. While people love this song for its well known lyric and pride theres much more to it than just being "born in the USA." The real meaning of this song is to protest war and more specifically the Vietnam War. The song says "got in a little hometown jam, so they put a riffle in my hand, sent me off to a foreign land, to go and kill the yellow man." This lyric speaks a sad truth about how if you were from America and of a certain age they would send anyone over to Vietnam with a gun to go fight off the enemy. After this the song then goes on to say "i had a brother at the Khe Sanh fighting off the Viet Cong, theyre still there, he's all gone, he had a woman he loves in Saigon, i got a picture of him in her arms." This part of the song refers to the bloodiest and most pointless battles of the Vietnam war. Springsteen brought this up to point out the fact of how pointless all the deaths were of this battle were. What was the point of that battle and was it worth it to lose all those men there? Those lyrics stood out most to me in the song of getting the point across of ant-war and question if it was worth it to lose all those lives of american citizens.

       I loved learning about this song because even i didn't know the other lyrics besides the well known "i was born in the USA" Its interesting to see how little people actually pay attention to all the lyrics and the rest of the meaning of the song besides the catchy three sentence chorus. I think this song is a perfect example of a song with a deeper meaning than most know about because one listens to it and only thinks about their american pride and how proud they are to be part of this country. Not the actual meaning and the suffering of others brought up throughout the rest of the songs lyrics.