Songoftheday 8/10/14 - I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand, into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man...

Bruce Springsteen - "My Hometown"
from the album Born In The U.S.A. (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9

Today's Song of the Day is by Bruce Springsteen, who went from critics' album rock radio darling to pop superstar with his Born In The U.S.A. album, which had already spun off six consecutive top-10 hits with "Dancing In The Dark", "Cover Me", the title track, "I'm On Fire", "Glory Days", and "I'm Goin' Down". Nearly a year and a half after the albums' release, a seventh single from the set was released. "My Hometown" set Bruce's childhood city of Freehold, New Jersey as a backdrop to a bittersweet recollection of how times changed, and some not for the better, and always difficultly...

"My Hometown" became the seventh and final top-10 single from Born In The U.S.A. on the American pop chart in January of 1986. The single also climbed to #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") chart, his only time at the top of that list. It also made it to #6 on the Mainstream Rock chart, making it also an even seven from the record to do so. Internationally, the single went to #9 in Britain and #6 in Ireland, and was a top-20 single in Canada and Sweden.

The popularity and sales of the single (it went "gold" in the US) were helped by the B-side, a live recording of Bruce and the E Street Band performing the Christmas classic "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town".

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Here's Bruce and the band on tour in 1985 in Paris...

..and again on The Today Show in 2007...

...and yet some more from last years show in London, England...

Up tomorrow: a remix king gets his girlfriend on a concrete hit.