Bruce Springsteen's colossal seventh album weaponised synthesisers and Max Weinberg's cannon-fire snare to smuggle working-class desperation into the Reagan era's victory lap. The title track's caustic Vietnam vet lament was so spectacularly misread that politicians tried claiming it as campaign fodder, missing the bitterness beneath that stadium-sized roar.

Seven top-ten singles and 30 million sales later, it remains rock's most successful Trojan horse: arena anthems that doubled as indictments, turning the Boss into both a pop titan and America's most complicated mirror.