Born in The U.S.A. - Cover and Enduring Popularity

Cover and Enduring Popularity

The title track inspired the celebrated Annie Leibovitz photo of Springsteen's backside against the backdrop of an American flag. The cover became a cult image on the Western popular culture. Springsteen commented on the origin of the concept: "We had the flag on the cover because the first song was called "Born in the U.S.A.", and the theme of the record kind of follows from the themes I've been writing about for at least the last six or seven years. But the flag is a powerful image, and when you set that stuff loose, you don't know what's gonna be done with it." Some people thought that the cover depicted Springsteen urinating on the flag. He denied it: "That was unintentional. 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. I didn't have any secret message. I don't do that very much."

Throughout time, the album did not lose its cultural and social relevance and was re-introduced to successive generations. As an example, even two decades after its original release, Rolling Stone published a celebrated cover showing Simpsons character Homer Simpson in a re-make of the cover of the album. Also the photo used on the single "Born in the U.S.A" was featured on the cover of the Rolling Stone issue from November 1990, the one that covered the 1980s calling Springsteen "Voice of the Decade".

In the late 1980s, the Nickelodeon game show Double Dare gave away guitars as prizes. When one of the stage hands was shown with the guitar, he would be wearing jeans with a red hat in his back pocket, mimicking the classic album cover image.

Springsteen himself noted in his 1998 book Songs: "For years after the release of the album, at Halloween, I had little kids in red bandannas knocking on at my door... singing, I was born in the U.S.A. They were not particularly well-versed in the Had a brother at Khe Sahn lyric."

The opening number of the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards featured host Jimmy Fallon singing "Born to Run" and wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans with a red hat in the back pocket, imitating Springsteen's pose in front of an American flag.

Many of the album songs also became concert staples for Springsteen' live shows. All of them were first performed during the "Born in the U.S.A. Tour". The album was performed in its entirety for the first time on October 3 and again on October 9, 2009 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with the second performance marking the final concert at that stadium before it was torn down.