Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Tramps Like Us, Part 1

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🗓️ 17 July 2021

⏱️ 71 minutes

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Summary

Bruce Springsteen has been a legend so long, it’s easy to forget that, for his first decade, he had trouble getting a hit. Yes, even the legendary “Born to Run”: It missed Billboard’s Top 20. And yet, several of Springsteen’s songs became big hits for others: the song with the misheard lyric about “a deuce” that went to No. 1 for a British band. The song he couldn’t finish that became a hit for a punk priestess. The song he refused to let his record label hear that became a massive hit for the Pointer Sisters. The hit he almost gave away to the Ramones.

In his second decade, on the other hand, Springsteen wasn’t just a hitmaker—he was the archetype: the symbol of flag-waving American rock, even when the song was less patriotism than protest. Advertisers, other pop stars, President Ronald Reagan—everybody glommed onto Bruce, and virtually all of them got him wrong. Just in time for summer, Hit Parade takes on the Boss, pop star. How did Bruce Springsteen invent his persona and find his truth?

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Production by Asha Saluja, with help from Rosemary Belson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:03.4	Hey there, hit parade listeners.
0:05.9	What you're about to hear is part one of this episode.
0:10.0	Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month.
0:14.2	Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops?
0:18.8	Sign up for Slate Plus.
0:24.1	You can try it for a month for just one dollar,
0:30.6	and it supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts.
0:40.8	Just go to slate.com slash hip parade plus. You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives, plus Hit Parade Plus. You'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives, plus Hit Parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics,
0:48.8	and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join, that's slate.com slash hit parade plus. Thanks. And now,
0:57.9	please enjoy part one of this hit parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast.
1:16.6	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series on today's show?
1:25.2	37 years ago this month, in July, 1984, the number one album in America
1:32.7	and number two single were by this New Jersey rocker.
1:37.9	Despite his nickname, The Boss had never had a hit this big before.
1:56.7	Dancing in the Dark was the lead single of Born in the USA, the seventh studio album by Bruce Springsteen.
2:05.9	Released at the start of summer, 1984, one of the most storied and competitive years for pop music ever,
2:14.1	Springsteen's LP controlled the Billboard album chart for all of July, while dancing in
2:20.6	the dark became a chart and MTV phenomenon, his fastest pop hit ever. Now, let's flash
2:29.2	forward a bit. One year later, in July of 1985, this song was breaking into the top 10 on the Hot 100.
2:43.0	That's Glory Days, the fifth top ten single from Born in the USA.
2:52.4	On the album chart, that LP was still also in the top 10, 52 weeks later.
	...

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