Seven of these twelve songs became Top-10 hits. Seven. The only other album that ever pulled that off was “Thriller.” So whatever else this record is, it is one of the most commercially dominant things anyone has ever released, and that is the part that should give you pause, because it is not a happy album.

Listen past the size of the sound and it is a record about Reagan-era America coming up short. Jobs that went away. Hometowns hollowed out. Nostalgia curdling into something sadder, the guy at the bar talking about his high-school years because the present has nothing for him. Hollow towns and downbound trains. The big drums and the huge choruses are doing a job: they make the despair go down like a celebration, so the whole country danced to it without quite hearing it.

A lot of these songs came out of, or sat right beside, the same stark home sessions that produced “Nebraska,” Springsteen’s bleakest record, and were then given the full-band treatment that made them stadium-sized. Released June 1984, it hit No. 1 by July and was the best-selling album in America the year after.

The clearest place to see the trick is the song it opens with. Start there.