{"id":50667,"date":"2025-11-02T17:23:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T17:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/02\/why-we-cant-stop-arguing-about-bruce-springsteens-nebraska\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T17:23:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T17:23:32","slug":"why-we-cant-stop-arguing-about-bruce-springsteens-nebraska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/02\/why-we-cant-stop-arguing-about-bruce-springsteens-nebraska\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Can\u2019t Stop Arguing About Bruce Springsteen\u2019s &#8216;Nebraska&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/bruce-springsteen\/\" id=\"auto-tag_bruce-springsteen\" data-tag=\"bruce-springsteen\">Bruce Springsteen<\/a>\u2019s <em>Nebraska<\/em> was always an album that people loved to argue about. So it makes sense that we\u2019re arguing about it now. <em>Springsteen: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/tv-movies\/tv-movie-reviews\/deliver-me-from-nowhere-review-bruce-springsteen-biopic-1235450363\/\">Deliver Me From Nowhere <\/a><\/em>underwhelmed at the box office, pulling in $16.1 million in its opening weekend. That might seem like a colossal success to you or me, except the budget was somehow $55 million, for a movie about an album made on a $400 tape deck. The reviews have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/springsteen-deliver-me-from-nowhere-critic-reviews-1235454696\/\">wildly mixed<\/a>. <em>Electric Nebraska<\/em> has given fans a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-album-reviews\/bruce-springsteen-nebraska-82-expanded-edition-review-1235449733\/\">whole new perspective <\/a>on this classic 1982 acoustic album, and how it could have been different if he\u2019d gotten the E Street Band involved. That\u2019s why the Springsteen arguments are blowing up like the Chicken Man.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tJust like Radiohead\u2019s <em>Kid A<\/em>, an extremely similar move that dropped 18 Octobers later, <em>Nebraska<\/em> gave great entertainment value whether you loved it or hated it, because it was so intensely fun to debate. In the movie\u2019s funniest scene, we hear Jimmy Iovine over the phone, screaming at manager Jon Landau over how idiotic it is to release this folk record. (Iovine plays himself, which is brilliant.) There\u2019s also a moment where Landau says he\u2019s going to play it for Iovine and Stevie Nicks; tragically, the movie does not depict Stevie\u2019s reaction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThe movie has Oscar-bait performances from Jeremy Allen White as the Boss and Jeremy Strong as Landau. But it\u2019s a divisive movie, as befits a divisive album, and even those of us who loved <em>Deliver Me From Nowhere<\/em> can find plenty to bitch about. It\u2019s a whole movie of men talking about Bruce Springsteen\u2019s problems, one of whom is Bruce. There\u2019s also a couple of women for empathetic nodding. The mastering guy gets more lines than the entire E Street Band. The message is that men will literally make acoustic concept albums about psycho killers instead of going to therapy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThere\u2019s an old-school show-biz melodrama at the heart of the <em>Nebraska<\/em> story \u2014 the evil corporate suits screaming, \u201cIt\u2019ll never sell,\u201d while the renegade rocker replies, \u201cAn artist\u2019s gotta do what an artist\u2019s gotta do.\u201d But that\u2019s why it makes such a great legend. That\u2019s why there\u2019s a movie about <em>Nebraska<\/em> and not the Grammy winner for Album of the Year, which was <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/toto\/\" id=\"auto-tag_toto\" data-tag=\"toto\">Toto<\/a> IV<\/em>. (I, for one, would watch the hell out of the \u201cYou know what this song needs? Wild dogs crying out in the night\u201d scene.)<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ editors-pick-module lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut the movie only gives tiny little tastes of 1982 rock culture, and why <em>Nebraska<\/em> was so comically unsuitable for airplay. In the movie, Springsteen drives listening to Foreigner\u2019s \u201cUrgent\u201d and Santana\u2019s \u201cWinning,\u201d two ubiquitous radio hits in 1981. The whole album is full of sweaty men driving around alone at night, praying for some rock &amp; roll salvation on the radio. But <em>Nebraska<\/em> is definitely what they were NOT hearing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThe biggest new star of 1982, as far as rock radio was concerned, was John Cougar, with <em>American Fool<\/em>, giving the kind of basic crowd-pleasing Springsteen moves that Springsteen himself was refusing to deliver. \u201cHurts So Good\u201d and \u201cJack and Diane\u201d were obvious (but effective) Boss-esque hits from the Coug, with more from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/bryan-adams\/\" id=\"auto-tag_bryan-adams\" data-tag=\"bryan-adams\">Bryan Adams<\/a> and John Cafferty soon on the way. (He was still a year away from reclaiming his name \u201cMellencamp.\u201d) <em>American Fool<\/em> was six months old when <em>Nebraska<\/em> came out \u2014 but still in the middle of a nine-week run at Number One. For guys like Mellencamp and Adams, hearing <em>Nebraska<\/em> must have been one of the happiest moments of their lives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut it was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/billy-joel\/\" id=\"auto-tag_billy-joel\" data-tag=\"billy-joel\">Billy Joel<\/a>, more than anyone, who reaped the benefits of <em>Nebraska<\/em>. He\u2019d just made his own uncommercial art album with <em>The Nylon Curtain<\/em>, which dropped a week earlier, with the same radio-unfriendly premise, on the same label, and probably inspired the same screaming fits from the label suits. But ironically, <em>The Nylon Curtain<\/em> became a hit anyway, because Billy ended up filling the Springsteen void \u2014 the main reason \u201cPressure\u201d and \u201cAllentown\u201d became such big hits was they were the next best thing to the AOR-friendly Springsteen songs that the Boss wasn\u2019t serving.\u00a0<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ recirculation-modules lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tA full-page magazine ad from <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> in late 1982: just Billy Joel\u2019s name, a fist clutching a wrench, and the complete lyrics of \u201cAllentown.\u201d No way would he have gotten away with that ad if Springsteen had thrown his base a bone or two on <em>Nebraska<\/em>. \u201cPressure\u201d was pretty damn uncommercial by Billy\u2019s standards \u2014 an ode to the struggles of rock stars to get their dealers on the phone, with the singer gnashing his teeth like he\u2019s trapped in the final half-hour of <em>Goodfellas<\/em>. (The excellent five-hour Billy Joel doc <em>And So It Goes <\/em>doesn\u2019t mention cocaine once, so he probably did his research by asking the big shots at Elaine\u2019s.) But compared to <em>Nebraska<\/em>, this song was \u201cJust the Way You Are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tRock radio wouldn\u2019t touch <em>Nebraska<\/em> at all, which was genuinely shocking at the time, considering that it was (after all) the new Bruce album. \u201cI think it\u2019s gonna do one of two things,\u201d a radio tip-sheet expert predicted in <em>Rolling Stone.<\/em> \u201cEither it\u2019s gonna continue a trend toward softer, more personal music being accepted by radio, or it\u2019s gonna be a complete bomb.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tMy local rock station WBCN, in the Springsteen stronghold of Boston, played \u201cOpen All Night\u201d for about a week and then gave up. The song had an electric guitar and a Chuck Berry riff, plus an anomalously upbeat mood (it\u2019s the twin of \u201cState Trooper,\u201d like an alternate-universe version of the guy\u2019s life), but no chorus, sounding dim on the radio. It fizzled at #22 on the Billboard rock \u201cTop Tracks\u201d chart, a certified dud, with even lower placements for \u201cAtlantic City\u201d and \u201cJohnny 99.\u201d That week, the top albums at rock radio were Rush (their controversial synth move <em>Signals<\/em>), Billy Squier, the Who (their awful farewell <em>It\u2019s Hard<\/em>), Don Henley (his first solo album), Bad Company, Kenny Loggins, Steve Winwood, and Men at Work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tWhen a star blows up into a superstar, as Springsteen did with <em>The River<\/em>, the cliched joke is that they could get a hit by breaking wind into the microphone \u2014 but <em>Nebraska<\/em> is the all-time test where that theory fails. He couldn\u2019t get this played on the radio even though people were <em>buying<\/em> it. After debuting at #29, it zoomed right to #4 the next week, a fast seller by 1982 standards. (It was the year\u2019s second-fastest rising album, behind <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/paul-mccartney\/\" id=\"auto-tag_paul-mccartney\" data-tag=\"paul-mccartney\">Paul McCartney<\/a>\u2019s <em>Tug of War<\/em>.) It peaked at #3, behind Cougar, Fleetwood Mac, and Steve Miller, just ahead of Michael McDonald. But radio wasn\u2019t biting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThe movie has a brief mocking glimpse of MTV, just for a cheap laugh, when Springsteen is flipping channels between <em>Badlands<\/em> reruns. But it turned out to be MTV that embraced <em>Nebraska<\/em> after rock radio completely rejected it. The fledgling network picked up on \u201cAtlantic City,\u201d which had a gritty video that Springsteen (wisely) didn\u2019t appear in. At MTV they played \u201cAtlantic City\u201d like it was a monster hit, just because they were so grateful to have any Bruce product at all, but it fit in surprisingly well with all the weirdo Brit synth-pop acts of 1982\/1983 \u2014 rock radio wasn\u2019t touching those artists either. Hearing it between Soft Cell and the Human League made so much more sense than hearing it between Rush and Journey. What made<em> Nebraska<\/em> all wrong for rock radio made it perfect for MTV, and it\u2019s fitting the New Wave kids were the ones who took \u201cAtlantic City\u201d to heart, especially considering how Springsteen was inspired by the avant-garde electro of Suicide and \u201cFrankie Teardrop.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut the key reason <em>Nebraska<\/em> was a hit with staying power is that people heard themselves in these songs. Ronald Reagan is bizarrely never mentioned in the movie, not even a news clip in the background between reruns of<em> Badlands<\/em>. Virtually everything said or written about <em>Nebraska<\/em> in the Eighties, including by Springsteen himself, framed it as the dark side of Reagan\u2019s America. By the end of 1982, unemployment was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1982\/12\/04\/us\/us-jobless-rate-climbs-to-10.8-a-postwar-record.html\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.8 per cent<\/a>, the highest since the Depression. Springsteen had already written a hit protest song about it, \u201cOut of Work,\u201d for Sixties rocker Gary U.S. Bonds, which (incredibly) went Top 40 that summer, with a third verse aimed right at \u201cHey Mr. President,\u201d taunting, \u201cMaybe you got a job for me just driving you around?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThen as now, the president did not care. As Reagan asked in March 1982, \u201cIs it news that some fellow out in South Succotash someplace has just been laid off, that he should be interviewed nationwide?\u201d But <em>Nebraska<\/em> portrays those losers in South Succotash as real people. As he told Rolling Stone, \u201c<em>Nebraska<\/em>\u00a0was about that American isolation: what happens to people when they\u2019re alienated from their friends and their community and their government and their job. Because those are the things that keep you sane, that give meaning to life in some fashion. And if they slip away, and you start to exist in some void where the basic constraints of society are a joke, then life becomes kind of a joke. And anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tNobody now wants to admit they scoffed at <em>Nebraska<\/em> at the time, just as nobody admits booing Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, as in the year\u2019s other big rock biopic, <em>A Complete Unknown<\/em>. But people sure did. As a reader complained on the <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> letters page, \u201cI liked him a whole lot better as a Fifties remake.\u201d This wasn\u2019t the <em>Broooce<\/em> people wanted, the guy who was already an affectionate caricature all through pop culture, as in Robin Williams doing his <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=1vT-VaMXsAw\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cElmer Fudd Sings Springsteen\u201d<\/a> routine, or the great <em>Dr. Demento Show<\/em> parody where Bruce Springstone sings <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=SYR0oRTW4uMo\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">the <em>Flintstones<\/em> theme.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ recirculation-modules trending-in-article lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThat\u2019s why this album opened the door for all the Eighties bar-band faux-Bruce clones. Hell, Hollywood was in the middle of making <em>Eddie and the Cruisers<\/em>, an E Street fan-fic movie that got wildly popular on cable TV in the long wait between <em>Nebraska<\/em> and <em>Born in the U.S.A<\/em>. (The flick even has its own <em>Nebraska<\/em>-esque subplot where Eddie sticks it to the Man with his uncommercial art album, <em>A Season in Hell<\/em>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut then as now, people cherished the underdog aspect of the album \u2014 the artist taking a stand, defying the odds, staying hungry. As people were so fond of saying in 1982, Bruce got back to the eye of the tiger. That\u2019s why the album has gone down in history, the ultimate case of a superstar ripping it up to start again, in the mode of <em>Kid A <\/em>or <em>Achtung Baby<\/em>, Bowie in Berlin or Neil Young heading for the ditch.<strong> <\/strong>In 2007, when it was time for Kelly Clarkson to follow up \u201cSince U Been Gone,\u201d she pissed off her label with the deeply personal <em>My December <\/em>and called it her <em>Nebraska <\/em>\u2014 definitely a sign that this cultural myth had entered new territory. But that\u2019s what makes <em>Nebraska<\/em> one of the all-time great rock &amp; roll arguments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/bruce-springsteen-nebraska-deliver-me-from-nowhere-1235458311\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bruce Springsteen\u2019s Nebraska was always an album that people loved to argue about. So it makes sense that we\u2019re arguing about it now. Springsteen:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":50668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}