Bruce Springsteen has placed himself in a lineage of folk and popular musicians, including Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, who have sought to effect social change. An acclaimed songwriter and energetic performer, Springsteen spent his early years singing in New Jersey bars, garnered a sizable commercial audience by 1975, and achieved superstar status with the release of Born in the USA (1984). His tremendous popularity, combined with his own ambition for success, opened his music to interpretations that seemed to conflict with his populist lyrics. Anxious to ride the bandwagon of his success, politicians and pundits appropriated his image to support their own perspectives. In much of the work that followed Born in the USA, however, Springsteen made a self-conscious effort to elucidate a liberal cultural politics.

Born in Freehold, New Jersey, Springsteen grew up in an austere working-class household. Uninterested in school, he was fascinated...