Talk:Born in the U.S.A.

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Untitled[edit]

Set Album to Class B & Top Importance Megamanic 09:05, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How many versions of the song exist? --Venkatesh 17:43, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A bunch. See the new Born in the U.S.A. (song) article. Wasted Time R 03:38, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"...and during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq many counterdemonstrators played the song opposite peace protests, which is a gross misrepresentation of the song itself." Now I happen to agree with this assessment, but it's hardly NPOV. Any way to keep the information but remove the POV? 208.59.171.97 01:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I already have tried. (see edit history) I explained why it is a gross misinterpretation by objectively (I think) analyzing the lyrics. War counterdemonstrators would be jusified in adopting the song if Springsteen had mentioned anything negative about Vietnam protests in (or maybe outside) his song. --Cjackb 00:00, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved this material to the new Born in the U.S.A. (song) article, which explores at length the folklore around the song. Wasted Time R 03:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The song is about a vietnam vet who got screwed over by his country. What's not to get?

-G —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.117.158.83 (talk) 05:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What's not to get is Springsteen's surprise that people heard the hook and ignored the message. He manipulated the audience to hear one thing when he "meant" another. And then he told all his hardcore fans and his antiwar friends, "hey, this was a protest song." It was but it was mostly a way to sell records. Maybe I'm being cynical but maybe Bruce was being cynical. 71.234.37.144 (talk) 01:30, 12 July 2008 (UTC)Will in New Haven71.234.37.144 (talk) 01:30, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Flag controversy[edit]

When the album came out, I remember some controversy, probably minor, which erupted because some people thought the cover of the album depicted Bruce urinating on the flag. Anybody remember this? If you have sources and it seems significant enough, it could be added to this article. --Kevin

Outtakes[edit]

There are at least 18 outtakes from the Born in the U.S.A. sessions (17 found on Tracks, 1 on The Essential Bruce Springsteen.) Should they be included in this article?24.0.60.105 (talk) 08:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The album chronology sector is messed up. Needs a fix.[edit]

It says on the previous album section "The River" instead of "Nebraska". Therest of the links look ok. I can't find the spot to edit it. Not a big wiki editor here. So, can someone else do it. Thnx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.233.154 (talk) 04:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are two album chronology sectors - one for just "Bruce Springsteen", another for bruce w/ e street band. Bruce did not make Nebraska w/ the e street band, but did make The River with them. So the chronology section for "w/ e street band" correctly lists River as previous album, while the "Bruce" sector correctly lists Nebraska as the immediate predecessor to Born in USA.--JayJasper (talk) 21:11, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Someone needs to investigate the claim that this is the first CD in the USA. I am fairly certain it was Thriller. I have one friend who actually still has the family SONY cdp101 player - a big deal when I was a kid. The comment by him was that "yeah they had the first player and when they got it the only album available was Thriller." I also remember it being in the news - again a big deal for something to be on a CD - a first! Funny I do a search and there are refs all over the net that lead back to wikipedia. This is also hard to believe since Born In The USA wasnt out until mid 84, the Sony cdp101 was out around mid 83 in the US, and Thriller was out Late 82, and if memmory serves me correctly it was a big advertising campaign by Sony for the production of CDs and the CDP101 unit. I am sure it wasnt Born In The USA the time gap alone dictates this.

The above potential correction if correct will have effect on several wikipedia pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.85.238.181 (talk) 17:43, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no move. -- tariqabjotu 03:27, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

– Stats for the song: 31,639 in last 90 days (8,481 in August). Stats for the album: 69,888 in last 90 days. (19,077 in August). However, numbers for the album may not be very accurate, as other readers may be looking for the song. And I'm not convinced that the hatnote will help a lot. And the album is not "general" enough to be the the broad concept. While there is no single criterion for primary topic, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says that usage and significance are most-used criteria. Song and album are equally significant, and they may be equally popular. In other words, album numbers do not reflect popularity. Even when WP:DAB might prevent us from improving the encyclopedia, there are still other rules, like WP:NCM and WP:AT. George Ho (talk) 18:56, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support move to Born in the U.S.A. (album), but oppose move of Born in the U.S.A. (disambiguation). Instead, I think primary topic should go to the song. Support move of Born in the U.S.A. (song) to the base title. Red Slash 00:34, 8 September 2013 (UTC) Withdrawn/neutral Red Slash 03:16, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • The album was the multi-million seller back in its days. The song also attracted millions. How can the song of the same name be more significant than the album? --George Ho (talk) 00:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The status quo seems to be fine in this case. The album was huge, critically and commercially. The song was one of several hit songs from the album. Clearly the primary topic. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 01:59, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support both per nom - given similar views can't see how the present ambiguation helps anyone. In printed sources the song is more discussed. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:49, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Song: 1800 aprox. hits, album 2600 aprox. hits, did I miss something? Tbhotch.™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 05:10, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, hits where? Plain Google? How? In ictu oculi (talk) 02:06, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If I clicked the link (yesterday) I got "1800 results", if I search now, I get now 900. If I changed the word "song" to "album" I got "2600 results", if I search now I get "1200 results", this is what I'm referring to. Tbhotch.™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 03:23, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I'm getting 8420 hits for "Born in the U.S.A."+album and 12,800 for "Born in the U.S.A." song. The Google Books measure seems to be off in this case. And of course, many or most sources that talk about one will also talk about the other, like the book Born in the U.S.A., which talks about both, among other things.--Cúchullain t/c 14:32, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The nominator's own page view stats show that album is more viewed, and no other article with this title comes anywhere close. The current setup is fine and I see no pressing reason to avoid the common practice.--Cúchullain t/c 14:14, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but the other page view stats don't come even close. Page views for the song are less than half those of the album, so even if every one of the 31k readers of the song article came here first, that still leaves a majority of this article's 70k readers in the right place. The dab page only has 206 views in the last 90 days, so they're not typically looking for anything else. The current setup appears to benefit the largest number of readers.--Cúchullain t/c 02:52, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That assertion is actually probably pretty close to true--I'd bet a strong majority of people looking for the song came here first, perhaps almost every single one of them. Nevertheless, as per TWODABS, since there would still be a small majority of overall users looking at the album page... I'll withdraw my !vote. I think you're right. Red Slash 03:16, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the song is highly notable, therefore the album is not clearly as the primary topic. If the difference between the song and the album article is roughly double, then this isn't clearly the primary topic, being only slight more than the hits for the song, further we cannot measure the number of people who just left when they didn't get the song as the first hit. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 14:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The song is the title track of the album and is therefore subsumed by the album, but not vice versa. Also, the album has charted higher (Billboard #1 vs. #9) and sold more copies (15X platinum vs gold) than the song. Ulmanor (talk) 04:14, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC based on nom's own stats. The closest contender is the song which is of course on the album. A hatlink takes care of that at least as well as a dab page. --B2C 23:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Based on the lede, I think the disambiguated title should belong to the song, not the album. The lede first discusses the song. The song is extremely well known, the rest of the album much less so. The album name derives from the song. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:42, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Genre warring[edit]

Piriczki, why are you starting an edit war over this revision to the infobox? (one revert after I reverted the IP user's unexplained genre change, then a second revert). READ the article please, because you'll find that genre--"rock and roll"--to be cited, to at least two sources:

"According to Roger Scott, [Born in the U.S.A.] was a 'defiantly rock 'n' roll' album, while Rolling Stone's Debby Bull said Springsteen incorporated 'electronic textures' with music he 'kept as its heart all of the American rock & roll from the early Sixties'." And possibly a third: "[Christgau] added that the record's vibrant music 'reminds me like nothing in years that what teenagers loved about rock and roll wasn't that it was catchy or even rhythmic but that it just plain sounded good'."

The Roger Scott sentence is the only explicit reference to a genre description of this album. Dan56 (talk) 03:55, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It seems unlikely that all three of these critics would have predicted that 20 years in the future a "web site" called Wikipedia would come up with its own separate and unique definitions of "rock and roll" and "rock" and apply that distinction in their reviews. Could it be possible that these critics used these terms, which are mostly synonymous outside of Wikipedia, interchangeably? Christgau, for one, uses the term "rock and roll" almost exclusively when referring to rock music, saying:

"I'm a rock critic, but I prefer to call the music I've devoted my life to rock and roll. Metal—it's rock and roll. Mbaqanga—it's rock and roll. Leonard Cohen chansons—rock and roll. Disco—rock and roll." -- Robert Christgau

His definition of "rock and roll" seems fairly broad which highlights the problem with using music writers to define genres—you have to presume to know how that person defines the term. Another problem is that when the reader clicks on the link to "rock and roll," it links to an article about "the first wave of music that originated in the US in the 1950s prior to its development into 'rock music'" and there is no mention of Bruce Springsteen or music of the 1980s in that article. Also, when the reader clicks on the links to the songs that make up this album, none of them are identified as "rock and roll." However, if one goes to the article "rock music" it actually mentions Bruce Springsteen and even this album in particular. Strange, isn't it? Piriczki (talk) 14:34, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see your point, Piriczki. One article (this one, or Springsteen) has no bearing on another (rock and roll), because they're usually made up of different sources covering their respective topics. You're focusing on Christgau when that's the least explicit of the three here, which also include Scott and Bull ("American rock & roll from the early Sixties"), who for all we know in this instance felt Springsteen was performing on this album that earliest style referred to in rock and roll. And according to the quote you cited, Christgau may just as well be calling this album "metal" or "disco", right?? Dan56 (talk) 00:52, 15 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Either way, who are you to interpret what they may have meant beyond the words they explicitly used?? It's ridiculous to suggest your change should be applied to every instance a critic refers to something as "rock and roll". You seem to have a larger issue with the distinction made by the existence of those two articles, which is irrelevant here; why not suggest a merger of the rock and roll article into rock music if you feel that way? You know as much as I do when those critics say "rock and roll" to mean "rock" or to actually mean "rock and roll", and the fact is we don't, so this argument is pointless unless they make the distinction themselves between the two in the source(s). Dan56 (talk) 00:52, 15 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Born in the U.S.A./Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)Press [show] to view →
Article requirements:

Green tickY All the start class criteria
Green tickY A completed infobox, including cover art and most technical details
Green tickY At least one section of prose (excluding the lead section)
Green tickY A track listing containing track lengths and authors for all songs
Green tickY A full list of personnel, including technical personnel and guest musicians
Green tickY Categorisation at least by artist and year
Green tickY A casual reader should learn something about the album. Andrzejbanas (talk) 05:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To meet the more rigorous criteria of the revised B class, this article needs improved sourcing to help readers verify the accuracy of information. Additional improvements may also be necessary. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums/Assessment for additional information on B class in album articles. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:16, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 18:16, 19 July 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 10:04, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 4 June 2016[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Per WP:SK#1 SSTflyer 06:08, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]


– The album was the multi-platinum bestseller, and it has hits in it. The statistics say that the album page is more viewed than the song. However, I still believe that people may also be looking for the song. Also, the title seems too generic, even when it refers to part of Bruce Springsteen's career. Does it primarily refer to the album or the song? Similar to Baby One More Time and Like a Prayer, if moved, statistics may change. This was proposed almost three years ago, but consensus rejected it. What about this time? George Ho (talk) 21:44, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose, a good thought though. The hatnote will take people to the song, and maybe a link should be added in the lead. This is still one of the most popular albums of all time. Randy Kryn 22:54, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This is a WP:TWODABS situation, so I see no reason to make this move. A hatnote works best in this case. Calidum ¤ 02:46, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The album receives 61.1% of all page views for topics of this name. Even if every reader of the other topics got there after hitting this article first, tens of thousands more readers intend this subject. The song, the only other topic to receive anywhere near this number of views, is linked in the hat note, meaning it can be reached in the same number of clicks as through a dab page. Moving the dab page to the base name would have the effect of inconveniencing readers looking for the album, while not making the song any easier to find.--Cúchullain t/c 04:08, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

External links modified[edit]

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There is a major problem with this page. After editing the recording section to be efficient and better english, I found "==Early configurations==" section below, which goes into greater detail of the same information. Need some opinions, should I combine, or do we delete one?Tillywilly17 (talk) 07:36, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Early configurations[edit]

There is a major problem with this page. After editing the recording section to be efficient and better english, I found "==Early configurations==" section below, which goes into greater detail of the same information. Need some opinions, should I combine, or do we delete one?Tillywilly17 (talk) 07:36, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I just realized his only reference is Brucebase, which has the best Bruce info in the world, but copying another website is definitely wrong I vote to delete this sectionTillywilly17 (talk) 08:26, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree with merging 2 sections and will edit to remove any references that rely on brucebaseTillywilly17 (talk) 18:02, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like Early Configurations was copied from Brucebase. It should be deleted. Tillywilly17 (talk) 05:44, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Worldwide sales[edit]

As of 8 th of July 2017 the album had sold 29 300 000 examples. At the same date Tunnel of love had sold 8 350 000 examples. Peter Larsson 77 (talk) 17:42, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a reliable source for that claim? Speatle (talk to me) please ping me when replying to something I said. 20:10, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Certification[edit]

Could someone change the certification to diamond? I tried but couldn't do it properly. Wolf O'Donnel (talk) 23:44, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Diamond (10× platinum) was surpassed and now it's 17× platinum. Dhoffryn (talk) 23:52, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Say something like 1.7x diamond or diamond (17x platinum) Wolf O'Donnel (talk) 02:00, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Diamond is only for 10 million. So you can't use it for 17 million. And 1.7 diamond does not exist. You can see the breakdown of levels on their page. Dhoffryn (talk) 02:08, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Seems rather silly to use 1.7x diamond – zmbro (talk) (cont) 02:24, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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