Another year has passed. Happy Flag Day!
…and Happy Birthday to the United States Army!
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My Ding-a-ling or Brown Eyed Handsome Man?
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Back in the USA: Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today,
We touched ground on an international runway
Jet propelled back home, from over the seas to the U. S. A.
New York, Los Angeles, oh, how I yearned for you
Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge
Let alone just to be at my home back in ol’ St. Lou.
Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway?
From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay
You can bet your life I did, till I got back to the U. S. A.
Looking hard for a drive-in, searching for a corner café
Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day
Yeah, and a juke-box jumping with records like in the U.S.A.
Well, I’m so glad I’m livin’ in the U.S.A.
Yes. I’m so glad I’m livin’ in the U.S.A.
Anything you want, we got right here in the U.S.A.
Now listen to the lyrics to Born in the USA: Born down in a dead man’s town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up…Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man…Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says “Son if it was up to me” Went down to see my V.A. man
He said “Son, don’t you understand”
I had a brother at Khe Sanh fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone, He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go
His excuse for his negative lyrics: According to Bruce Springsteen’s words in the book ‘Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream’, this song is “about a working-class man in the midst of a spiritual crisis, in which man is left lost… It’s like he has nothing left to tie him into society anymore. He’s isolated from the government. Isolated from his family…to the point where nothing makes sense.”
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