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I believe that the image along with caption represents and explains the true purpose behind this song

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"Max Weinberg’s drumbeats explode like artillery shells. The song sounds like a Roman triumph." (Honigmann, 2016)

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"Critics musical and political gleefully fell on Reagan’s “error”, confident that they had a better grasp of the nature of American patriotism than the Great Communicator..." (Honigmann, 2016)

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"America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen." (Honigmann, 2016)

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Bruce Springsteen interview with  Ronald Regan

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Bruce Springsteen interview with  Ronald Regan

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Bruce Springsteen Talking about his song Born in the USA.. With Special Guest star Ronald Reagan.

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Bruce Springsteen - Born In The U.S.A. Official Music Video

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I chose the song, Born in the U. S. A by Bruce Springsteen. This song in particular is not in my genre of music I listen to at all given that it is a rock song. I tend to listen to more of the Pop genre of music. The Pop/rap genre of music is what my age group  tends to listen to in today's time. I feel like this song connected with people that listened to the rock genre as well as people that was proud to be a part of the USA culture, but also wanted change for how their country was being ran. To have people in the audience that support your song/music gives the performer a sense of pride and connection to the song and the audience. This song was made during Ronald Reagan's re-election term. The song is about a story of a guy that's a criminal that gets sent of to war and comes back with PTSD and not able to get a job. "the track is not a celebration of American Exceptionalism, but rather, an indictment of the government, the military-industrial-complex, and the way in which we treat those who have risked their lives in battle." (Molloy, 2014) The song is to get politicians to see how the Americans feel about going to and coming back from war and what they experience when fighting for our country. I feel like this song allows people to join together and be a community that supports a cause for the people that are going to war for us everyday. This type of music engagement allows the societal community to connect and support one other for a certain cause they believe in no matter their backgrounds. I feel like especially today we need a lot more of music engagement for certain causes, because music is what brings people together. Even though this was not really the purpose of the song, when I listen to it, I immediately get a feeling of American pride and belt out the chorus. Now that I understand the true purpose of this song and can definitely empathize with the people of this time, given that my dad was in the military. Also, given that I was raised in a military family I understand the aspects of this song and support the message.

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This article gives the background history and purpose of the Bruce Springsteen song.

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In September 1984, Ronald Reagan was coasting towards re-election as president of the US. Addressing a crowd in Hammonton, New Jersey, he paid tribute to a local hero. "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about," - the lyrics uncannily like one of Trump's own tweets.

Springsteen was not pleased. "The president," he noted drily at his next show, "was mentioning my name the other day and I kinda got to wondering what his favourite album musta been. I don't think he's been listening to this one." And he launched into "Johnny 99", a stark ballad from the incomparably bleak Nebraska, sung from the viewpoint of a multiple murderer.

Assuming Reagan was not a secret fan of Nebraska, he had probably been pointed towards Springsteen by the columnist George Will, who had recently praised Springsteen's song "Born in the USA" for its "grand, cheerful affirmation". In fact, "Born in the USA" tells the story of a minor criminal who gets "in a little home-town jam" and is shipped off to Vietnam, only to return with PTSD, unable to find employment.

Critics musical and political gleefully fell on Reagan's "error", confident that they had a better grasp of the nature of American patriotism than the Great Communicator (who, two months later, carried 49 of the 50 states). But if Reagan and Will thought that mood trumped content, they were not necessarily wrong.

As originally recorded, Springsteen alone with a guitar, the song's anger is transparent. The chorus is flat, affectless. But when he and the E Street Band came to re-record it for the album that would bear its name, they pumped it up. The melody is pushed to the top of Springsteen's vocal range (in the same way that "The Star-Spangled Banner" crescendos to impossibly high notes) so that the whole song sounds like its own climax. Roy Bittan's synthesiser fanfare is as bright as cocaine. Max Weinberg's drumbeats explode like artillery shells. The song sounds like a Roman triumph.

Podcast

Bruce Springsteen's bleak ballad of American life has been promoted by politicians from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. David Honnigman examines the song's fraught relationship with power.Credit: Columbia

Many excellent songs have come out of mixing pop and politics; the dangerous combination is mixing pop and politicians. Donald Trump's playlist of campaign songs has had their singers rushing to distance themselves from him, from REM to Adele. He entered the Republican convention in July to the strains of "We Are the Champions", over protests from Queen's Brian May.

British politicians have had an equally uneasy relationship with pop, from Harold Wilson courting The Beatles with OBEs, to Tony Blair (a lead singer manqué) wooing and being snubbed by everyone from David Bowie to Noel Gallagher. Another former prime minister's penchant for early 1980s Mancunian indie earned him a rebuke from Johnny Marr: "David Cameron, stop saying you like the Smiths, no you don't. I forbid you to like it."

According to the moral foundations theory propounded by the American psychologist Jonathan Haidt, political progressives stress "care and fairness" while libertarians favour "liberty and fairness", whereas conservatives also respond to "loyalty, authority and sanctity". Examining "Born in the USA" through this lens is revealing. Springsteen is famously progressive, and all rock musicians are secretly libertarian, so "fairness" resonates throughout the song. But the chorus also sounds like an appeal to in-group loyalty, and the music is stamped with authority. No wonder conservatives - including Donald Trump, who has of course played it at his rallies - also respond to it.

Springsteen is still infuriating politicians: in the spring he cancelled a concert in North Carolina in response to the state's new law on transgender access to bathrooms. He does still perform "Born in the USA", but nowadays it comes with curled, bent acoustic guitar notes, as if Woody Guthrie were performing it in the 1950s. Harder, now, to miss the message. Even for a politician.

Letter in response to this article:
Springsteen conveys his anger with band's aid / From Ian McMaster
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2018. All rights reserved.

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In September 1984, Ronald Reagan was coasting towards re-election as president of the US. Addressing a crowd in Hammonton, New Jersey, he paid tribute to a local hero. "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen.