Back in my days of concert band in high school, our music teacher was almost always able to point out flat sounds in a room full of kids and their instruments. I find it shameful that some discerning, logical adults can’t do the same.

I have been guilty of listening to and downloading on iTunes songs of musicians and artists whose politics do not align with my own. If it’s a catchy beat and it helps me burn off that cupcake I shouldn’t have ingested at the office, I’m all about putting it in my ears. I am also all about recognizing the unique talents that musicians and vocalists possess. I admire their marketing strategies and how they each play to their genre.

Enter Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen. Jersey-born, flannel-shirt-and Levis-wearing Bruce Springsteen. I’ve enjoyed a Springsteen song or two back in the 80s and was even present when he filmed his “Glory Days” video in Hoboken when I was just a kid. When people think of “The Boss”-they envision working class Americana. The white tee, the blue jeans and the red, white and blue, right? “Born in The U.S.A.”

It was not until I was an adult that I realized that “Born in the U.S.A.” was a song not boasting of American pride but of embarrassment of America and an anti-Vietnam war sentiment:

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

It seems as if the ongoing theme in some of Springsteen’s songs reflect the “embarrassed to be an American” sentiment. And it seems as if “The Boss” is at it again with what he does best with his next venture. The new song, “That’s What Makes Us Great”.

“Don’t tell me a lie / And sell it as a fact / I’ve been down that road before / And I ain’t goin’ back / And don’t you brag to me / That you never read a book / I never put my faith / In a con man and his crooks.”