“Youngstown”

In 1995, Bruce Springsteen released “Youngstown,” a representation of a former steelworker’s reaction to the deindustrialization that plagued Youngstown, Ohio, after multiple steel mill closings. “Youngstown” is a rare instance in which Springsteen refers to a distant past in order to comment on the present state of American capitalism. Springsteen sings about worker alienation and a capitalist society’s view of workers as economic resources rather than as people. Springsteen’s representation of the city ends with deindustrialization but Youngstown citizens did not want their story to end there. Twelve years later, You Are the War That I Want, a punk rock group from Youngstown, released “Fuck You Bruce Springsteen (an Ode to Youngstown),” in response to Springsteen’s depressing representation of their city. In this chapter, I use theories of capitalism, labor, and memory to analyze the music and lyrics of “Youngstown” and “Fuck You Bruce Springsteen.” This analysis demonstrates how the citizens’ reconstruction of collective memory fluctuated between nostalgic visions of the past and progressive hopes for the future. Just as Springsteen resurfaced the distant past to comment on the present, Youngstown citizens reclaimed their past and drew power from tradition in an attempt to move forward in a post-industrial society.