And after Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen returned to the studio with the E-Street Band and emerged with a massive 83 minute double offering that transcended everything he had done before.

Everything is bigger: the fist pumping anthems of Born to Run are back, expanded to the brim with raucousness and pounding drums and piano (see Sherry Darling, with its studio crowd and ripping saxophone solo), while the more somber material that made up Darkness on the Edge of Town is even more low-key, with a handful of acoustic-led ballads filling out the tracklist.

And throughout the whole album, The Boss’s me/us vs. the world’s posture is stronger than ever, like in Independence Day when he declares, “I won’t let them do to me what they did to you.” While not an attitude contained within the United States, there’s something distinctly American about Springsteen’s nuance of the attitude that makes him worthy of the title bestowed him.