re: Which Springsteen Song is Better?

Born in the USA with all the synthesizers sounds dated. Thunder Road is a great song. I even love some of the early recordings/demos of it better:
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Springsteen was always better when he was using a variety of instruments during a song. Thunder Road utilizes piano, guitar, harmonica, and sax.

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Honestly Born in the USA sounds like a John Mellencamp song.

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I take it you have never listened to lonesome jubilee. Wide variety of instruments used. Wouldn't call it my favorite but it does exist.

As to other posts and the lyrics argument, i am aware that the song is much more than the chorus and it is not pro america. I like the song because it goes beyond what your average vietnam documentary would do. Song tells why he wound up over there and more importantly, what happened when he got home. He fails to get a job, thanks to hate for vietnam vets as well as government policies that have been having a negative impact on manufacturing since the 70s that can be witnessed first hand via driving through most American cities East of the Mississippi.
He gets sent over seas, loses his brother, comes home and the nightmare continues, thanks in part to the same people that started the war. I'm sure many would agree we have problems today, and thus the sad part is the song is still relavent over 30 years later and people still think it is just some classic rock hit and ignore everything outside the chorus.
Anyway, because of its message, I consider it more meaningful than thunder road, and thus prefer it.

You can like thunder road I don't care. Everyone has their favorites, but don't hate on born in the USA just because there is some synthesizers played during it

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They’re gonna tear you apart

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You really think I care what this board says?
Most are the equivalent of freshman philosophy majors who think because they read a couple pages of Aristotle and Machiavelli they know all when it comes to anything

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Most are the equivalent of freshman philosophy majors who think because they read a couple pages of Aristotle and Machiavelli they know all when it comes to anything

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Not everyone is as enlightened as us on the music board.

Thunder Road is just a much better song. Even if Born in the USA had the best lyrics in the world, it’s literally just drums and a synthesizer playing the same melody over and over again.

Thunder Road is a masterpiece because it has progressions. It goes from slow, with piano and harmonica, to faster with piano, harmonica, guitar, and drums. Then the final progression is guitar, sax, and piano. It’s perfect.

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Honestly Born in the USA sounds like a John Mellencamp song.

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Likely purposefully so.

It was smart of Springsteen to have the better song first.


Thunder Road and it's not even close.

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And it was written by a guy that pissed his pants and then headed to Canada to avoid the draft

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You don't know what you are talking about. He was drafted and failed his physical, so they sent him home.

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You don't know what you are talking about. He was drafted and failed his physical, so they sent him home.

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You're right. It was Ted Nugent that pissed his pants to try to avoid the draft. But Springsteen tried to dodge the draft before he knew that he'd be 4F.

"According to Rolling Stone, Springsteen's "efforts to convince a Newark, New Jersey, selective service board of his abject unsuitability for combat in Vietnam apparently extended to claiming he was both gay and tripping on LSD, but none of it was necessary." In the end, Springsteen was dismissed not for any of those made-up reasons, but because a concussion he had suffered in a motorcycle accident resulted in him failing his physical. He was classified 4F, or unfit for service."

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Honestly Born in the USA sounds like a John Mellencamp song.

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Point taken, but let's not go too far. John Cougar Mellencamp is fricking awful...like 'make my skin crawl when I hear one of his songs' kind of awful. Much like Journey, Boston, Styx, or any of that other 80's bullshite.

Born In the USA ... mostly for nostalgia reasons and because it was actually a pretty subversive song ala This Land Is Your Land - Woody Guthrie. Reagan conservatives were singing it proudly but the song was a rebuke of Reagan, Trickle Down Economics, union busting etc.