
There Was Nothing You Could Do
Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland
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Narrated by:
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Steven Hyden
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By:
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Steven Hyden
About this listen
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 listeners on a journey to find out.
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Story
In 1970, Asbury Park, New Jersey, was ripped apart by race riots that left the once-proud beach town an hour away from Manhattan smoldering, suffering and left for dead. Four years later, a few miles down the coast in Seaside Heights, two bouncers, Jack Roig and Butch Pielka, tired of the daily grind, dreamt of owning their own place. Under-prepared and minimally funded, the two bought the first bar they considered, in a city where no one wanted to be, without setting one foot in the place. They named it the Stone Pony.
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Great content! But who directed this…
- By EmilyH on 07-20-24
By: Nick Corasaniti
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This Isn't Happening
- Radiohead's "Kid A" and the Beginning of the 21st Century
- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1999, as the end of an old century loomed, five musicians entered a recording studio in Paris without a deadline. Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a rarefied status granting them the time, money, and space to make a masterpiece. But Radiohead didn't want to make another rock record. Instead, they set out to create the future.
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Amazing read but…
- By Alexis Feldman on 06-01-21
By: Steven Hyden
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Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me
- What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life
- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Music opinions bring out passionate debate in people, and Steven Hyden knows that firsthand. Each chapter in Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me focuses on a pop music rivalry, from the classic to the very recent, and draws connections to the larger forces surrounding the pairing.
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Great title but not very good overall
- By Noam on 03-21-19
By: Steven Hyden
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How Sondheim Can Change Your Life
- By: Richard Schoch
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, but for countless fans around the world, he is “still here,” to quote one of his lyrics. With acclaimed revivals of his landmark shows occurring around the world and introducing new generations to the man who transformed American musical theater, Sondheim’s legacy has only grown. What is it about such classic songs as “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, and “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods that speaks to us so intimately and profoundly?
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Putting It Together
- By 0 Stars on 12-06-24
By: Richard Schoch
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Bruce
- By: Peter A. Carlin
- Narrated by: Bobby Cannavale
- Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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This sweeping biography of Bruce Springsteen features in-depth interviews with family, band members, childhood friends, ex-girlfriends, and a poignant retrospective from the Boss himself. It’s Bruce as his many fans haven’t before seen him - the man behind the myth, describing his life and work in intimate, vivid detail.
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For the most part, this is what I was hoping for
- By Patrick King on 12-11-12
By: Peter A. Carlin
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Sellout
- The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007)
- By: Dan Ozzi
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Seasoned music writer Dan Ozzi chronicles this embattled era in punk. Focusing on eleven prominent bands who made the jump from indie to major, Sellout charts the twists and turns of the last “gold rush” of the music industry, where some groups “sold out” and rose to surprise super stardom, while others buckled under mounting pressures. Sellout is both a gripping history of the music industry’s evolution, and a punk rock lover’s guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era.
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A pedant’s note
- By Luke on 11-21-21
By: Dan Ozzi
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Hammer of the Gods
- The Led Zeppelin Saga
- By: Stephen Davis
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The members of Led Zeppelin are major deities in the pantheon of rock gods. The first and heaviest of the heavy metal monsters, they violently shook the foundations of rock music and took no prisoners on the road. Their tours were legendary, their lives were exalted, and their music transcendent. No band ever flew as high as Led Zeppelin or suffered so disastrous a fall. And only some of them lived to tell the tale. Originally published in 1985, and last updated in 2008, Hammer of the Gods is considered the ultimate word on Led Zeppelin.
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Saga Is the Right Word!
- By Christina Dalcher on 11-30-24
By: Stephen Davis
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Born on the Fourth of July
- By: Ron Kovic
- Narrated by: Holter Graham, Bruce Springsteen - introduction
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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This New York Times best seller (more than one million copies sold) details the author's life story (portrayed by Tom Cruise in the Oliver Stone film version) - from a patriotic soldier in Vietnam, to his severe battlefield injury, to his role as the country's most outspoken anti-Vietnam War advocate, spreading his message from his wheelchair.
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Read it and rejoice, read it and weep—Springsteen
- By Susie on 07-14-16
By: Ron Kovic
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Where Are Your Boys Tonight?
- The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008
- By: Chris Payne
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead, Chris Abell
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Music journalist Chris Payne experienced emo's mainstream takeover from sweaty crowds and mosh pits growing up in New Jersey. In Where Are Your Boys Tonight? he offers an authoritative, impassioned, and occasionally absurd account told through interviews with more than 150 people, from the scene's biggest bands, producers, and managers to the teenage fans who helped redefine American music culture.
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I REALLY Wanted to Like This
- By Fuzz414 on 08-18-23
By: Chris Payne
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The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.
- A Biography
- By: Peter Ames Carlin
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of musical eccentrics came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, Georgia. Within a few short years, they had taken over the world–with smash records like Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster and Green. Raw, outrageous, and expressive, R.E.M.’s distinctive musical flair was unmatched, and a string of mega-successes solidified them as generational spokesmen.
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Sometimes good guys win
- By Roger D. Plothow on 11-27-24
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3 Shades of Blue
- Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool
- By: James Kaplan
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity. James Kaplan’s magnificent 3 Shades of Blue captures how that golden era came to be, and its pinnacle with the recording of Kind of Blue. It’s a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the cities that gave jazz its home, and the Black geniuses behind its rise. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange environments where it can flourish most.
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Great deep dive into a pinnacle of jazz, marred by author bias against later jazz years
- By Michael J. Anderson on 04-08-24
By: James Kaplan
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Bernoulli's Fallacy
- Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science
- By: Aubrey Clayton
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the 17th-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it.
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Rigorously Bayesian
- By Anonymous User on 01-25-22
By: Aubrey Clayton
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A Freewheelin' Time
- A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
- By: Suze Rotolo
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Suze Rotolo chronicles her coming of age in Greenwich Village during the 1960s and the early days of the folk music explosion, when Bob Dylan was finding his voice and she was his muse.
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An introverted artist's tale...
- By Andrew on 10-19-22
By: Suze Rotolo
What listeners say about There Was Nothing You Could Do
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jeremy
- 10-26-24
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….
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- Houston Attorney
- 09-30-24
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.
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