(Album ©1984, Columbia Records)
The best selling album of 1985, and one of the 
best-selling albums of all time, BITUSA has sold more than 30 million copies and spawned a record-tying 7 top-10 singles. And this album cover image is as iconic as the music within. The image is a photo taken by Annie Leibovitz that captures the blue-collar aesthetic that Springsteen has always maintained. The irony is that the music is anything but jingo-istic, even the title track, which was famously mis-understood by George Will, who clearly wasn’t actually listening to the lyrics except in the chorus, and that spilled over to President Reagan’s speechwriters during his re-election campaign in 1984. All of which led to one of the most tone-deaf references, clueless references of a rock star by a politician…at least until Trump.
My favorite quote about this shot was Springsteen’s, who said about why they chose this shot of all the ones Leibovitz took, “We took a lot of different types of pictures, and in the end, the picture of my ass looked better than the picture of my face, that’s what went on the cover.” Network9 has a nice, quick article about why this image is so iconic from a design and marketing perspective.
This record meant everything to me in 1984 and 1985 – I listened to the album so many times, over and over. It validated my love of Springsteen (which had started five years earlier), after being seen by my early teenage peers as so out-of-touch for loving Springsteen during the dawn of hair metal and new wave. It didn’t help that all the other bands I liked most were from the ’60’s (The Stones, The Who, The Kinks). Suddenly, all of my friends at least got it, if they didn’t actually become Bruce fans.
Oddly enough, the biggest hit single on the record – “Dancing in the Dark” – was not one I liked all that much, and it really hasn’t aged well, in my opinion. Maybe it was over-exposure then, but I think it’s the over-reliance on synthesizer playing the main riff that leave it sounding dated now. When Bruce and the band plays it live, it’s much more guitar-driven, and when he performed it in his Broadway show, with just an acoustic guitar, it sounded more alive than it had in quite a while.
Interesting Fact: the CD was the first EVER manufactured in the US. Before that, CD’s were manufactured either in Japan or Germany.
