Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska is one of the most notable outliers in the history of rock & roll. Known for bombast, grandiosity and a landmark live show, the Springsteen of 1982 was coming off the ambitious double-LP The River with a Nor'easter of a wind at his back. And then came Nebraska with its death-letter mood and somber rudimentaries, an album that did more than pay lip service to Woody and Dylan, as meditative an American eulogy as pop music has ever produced.
That people loved it, that it was so well-received that it hit #3 on the Billboard album chart and "Atlantic City," the album's full-throated and deeply mournful fulcrum, was a Top 10 pop hit, is simply a testament to the cult of Bruce. His sweat, his charisma, the crinkles of his eyes when he broke into one of his "aw shucks" wide-open grins were the down payment on that success. It's hard to think of a more harrowing record to have broken wide.
Nebraska has come to exist as something outside even Springsteen. Nebraska is a type of record now. It's a statement of intent, a call to introspection. It's an equation: acoustic guitar + reverbed voice + a bedroom four-track sticky with cigarette tar on a table stained by the rings of whiskey tumblers. Nebraska means honesty, sincerity. It's a record made for no one, an incidental audience.
It's one of the greatest records ever made. And while not all of these albums can make that claim, they have the spirit of Nebraska deep inside of them, and never intentionally so. Like the murderous quiet of "State Trooper," these songs were simply meant to exist.
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