There Was Nothing You Could Do

Bruce Springsteen's “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland

By: Steven Hyden

Narrated by: Steven Hyden

A thought-provoking exploration of Bruce Springsteen’s iconic album, Born in the U.S.A.—a record that both chronicled and foreshadowed the changing tides of modern America

On June 4, 1984, Columbia Records issued what would become one of the best-selling and most impactful rock albums of all time. An instant classic, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. would prove itself to be a landmark not only for the man who made it, but rock music in general and even the larger American culture over the next 40 years.

In There Was Nothing You Could Do, veteran rock critic Steven Hyden shows exactly how this record became such a pivotal part of the American tapestry. Alternating between insightful criticism, meticulous journalism, and personal anecdotes, Hyden delves into the songs that made—and didn’t make—the final cut, including the tracks that wound up on its sister album, 1982’s Nebraska. He also investigates the myriad reasons why Springsteen ran from and then embraced the success of his most popular (and most misunderstood) LP, as he carefully toed the line between balancing his commercial ambitions and being co-opted by the machine.

But the book doesn’t stop there. Beyond Springsteen’s own career, Hyden explores the role the album played in a greater historical context, documenting not just where the country was in the tumultuous aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, but offering a dream of what it might become—and a perceptive forecast of what it turned into decades later. As Springsteen himself reluctantly conceded, many of the working-class middle American progressives Springsteen wrote about in 1984 had turned into resentful and scorned Trump voters by the 2010s. And though it wasn’t the future he dreamed of, the cautionary warnings tucked within Springsteen’s heartfelt lyrics prove that the chaotic turmoil of our current moment has been a long time coming.

How did we lose Springsteen’s heartland? And what can listening to this prescient album teach us about the decline of our country? In There Was Nothing You Could Do, Hyden takes readers on a journey to find out.

Academic but interesting

A classic, academic, piece of criticism. Thoughtful and well delivered. Not a gushing fan piece in any way.

Thoughtful and interesting

If you’re a Bruce fan, you’ll love this book. It’s a consideration and reconsideration of the importance of both born in the USA and Bruce himself.

Born To Ramble

I’m a fan of Mr. Hyden’s music writing and podcasts. But this is a misfire. Those expecting a head-on history of this album might / probably will be disappointed to hear a book’s-long ramble of a loosely organized thesis that could’ve easily been a single chapter: The Boss’s historic working class anthems were ultimately — yet unknowingly at the time — about the grandfathers of MAGA-ism, and how Springsteen has had to reconcile that with his own populism across the decades. By itself that’s a compelling topic, but it’s told here in a loosey-goosey style without much focus or even in relation to the chapter titles, and the facts of the album’s recording are hard to come by. Stuff like the author’s imaginary sequencing of unreleased tracks seems better suited to one of his tongue in cheek Uproxx articles. Wanted to love this but couldn’t.

Reads like a college term paper

Wanted this book to be good. But it reads like a college term paper on Springsteen. The author also writes towards a much younger audience, explaining that there was no internet in the 1980s, explaining what MTV is….