Nebraska |
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Released: September 20, 1982 Peak: 3 US, 3 UK, 3 CN, 8 AU Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.6 UK, 4.5 world (includes US + UK) Genre: folk rock |
Rating: 4.110 out of 5.00 (average of 24 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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How Not to Follow a #1 Album“Nebraska was one of the most challenging albums ever released by a major star on a major record label.” AM Bruce Springsteen’s previous album, 1980’s The River, took him to the top of the Billboard album charts for the first time, gave him a top-five single with “Hungry Heart,” and was a multi-million seller. It established him “as an arena rocker, born to mesmerize huge crowds with songs about the romance of the road.” EW’93Demo RecordingsWhen it came time to record a follow-up, Springsteen “asked Mike Batlan, his guitar tech from the last tour, to set up a basic tape deck…so the singer could tape all the new songs he was writing.” 33-26 Springsteen recorded 4-track demos “with a Tascam Portastudio and a couple mics in a modest Colts Neck, New Jersey house.” PM Instead of embracing the “grand ambitions, big stages and larger-than-life, arena-packing choruses” PM he’d become known for, he “discarded the histrionics entirely for sparse, heart-wrenching lamentations” PM “recorded with only acoustic or electric guitar, harmonica, and vocals.” AMSpringsteen and Batlan mixed fifteen of the songs that were recorded on January 3, 1982. The big question, however, was, “Coud this music – which was recorded onto a cheap, jerry-rigged four-track tape machine and mixed onto a two-track cassette that Springsteen carried around in his back pocket without a case – be turned into a vinyl album that could be manufactured in the hundreds of thousands and be played on the radio?” 33-87 The answer was yes. Nine of those fifteen songs ended up on the eventual Nebraska album. 33-27 Springsteen took a stab at recreating the songs with the full E Street Band treatment, but opted instead to release the original, acoustic demos, thinking they sounded better. “These intimate confidences were the exact opposite of the over-the-top, declamatory singing he had favored on his first four albums, and they put the emphasis where it belongs in these songs – on the words.” 33-84 It was a bold move for a man who had come to be embraced for his stadium-rocker anthems. Instead, Nebraska was a model of “unconventionality…[for] its refusal so succumb to rock conventions.” JG “Springsteen would have to sell his fourteen-million-dollar house and get a real job if he kept putting out desolate records with no hit singles.” JG The Songwriting“It was really the content that dictated the approach, however. Nebraska’s ten songs marked a departure for Springsteen, even as they took him farther down a road he had been traveling previously.” AM The songs didn’t always “seem quite finished; sometimes the same line turned up in two songs. But that only served to unify the album.” AM “Most of these songs take place on some unknown highway at some ungodly hour, a lonely narrator begging for some connection to something, be it a woman, a job, a radio disc jockey, ora half-forgotten family.” SGThis collection also found Bruce “branching out into better developed stories.” AM The songs are “haunting,” SG “brooding and intimate” EW’93 – “gifts to be treasured, rife with vulnerability, sincerity and, above all, humanity.” PM Nebraska “functions as a pivotal turning point in how Springsteen thought of writing and recording,” SG demonstrating “the extra depth that makes him great.” EW’93 It is an album that has “the guts to admit that for some people the world may never be a friendly place.” JG It “is a record about being alone, about being desperate, about being brave enough to admit that there’s no easy cure for desperation.” JG In addition, “Nebraska’s indie cred and lo-fi influence are long since established.” SG The Album CoverThe cover of the Nebraska album was a “grainy, black-and-white photograph” taken by David Kennedy of “an empty Midwestern highway stretching to a cloudy horizon, seen through the windshield of a car with snow on its hood.” 33-87The Songs“Many songs on Nebraska seem to essentially be flip-sides of each other, with shared themes and sometimes even lyrics. ‘Mansion on the Hill’ features a grown man reminiscing about childhood nights spent staring at the titular mansion, while ‘My Father’s House’ features a grown man dreaming of visiting his father’s house. ‘State Trooper’ is about trying to outrun a cop, while ‘Highway Patrolman’ is told from the viewpoint of one, and both ‘Atlantic City’ and ‘Johnny 99’ are about broken-down men who commit crimes for economic reasons. ‘Open All Night’ and ‘State Trooper’ share many lyrics, but the former is a fun rocker about driving to visit a girlfriend, while the latter seems to portray its singer as suffering a psychotic breakdown.” MMHere’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs. |
NebraskaBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: Nebraska (1982), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), Electric Nebraska (1982/2025), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) Covered by: Chrissie Hynde & Adam Seymour (2000), Bob Walkenhorst (2010) About the Song:Nebraska is based on the real-life tale of Charlie Starkweather, a 19-year-old who went on a ten-person killing spree in January 1958 with his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate. Bruce saw Terrence Malick’s 1974 movie Badlands (after which he’d named another song back in 1978) about the events and then read the book Caril, upon which the movie was based.“The song offers nothing traditional in the way of a serial killer narrative.” MM “Springsteen slips into the role of a cold-blooded killer” UP who experiences no guilt or remorse and seems to have no motivation for his crimes. “It’s a shockingly bleak narrative, even for one involving a serial killer.” MM “Fans and critics went into contortions trying to explain why that fatalistic tune was in fact some sort of affirmation.” JG However, like the other songs on the album, it actually displays “remarkable pessimism and…refusal to romanticize that pessimism.” JG It “set the tone for a series of portraits of small-time criminals, desperate people, and those who loved them.” AM “The numbness of his vocal, and the stomach-churning harmonica wails that punctuate the verses, ultimately connect to a greater spiritual desolation that was pervasive in Reagan’s America, and each version of America that’s come after.” UP |
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Atlantic CityBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: 10/9/1982 as a single, Nebraska (1982), In Concert/MTV Plugged (1993), Live in New York City (2000), The Essential (2003), The Collection (2012), The Essential (2015), Best of (2024), Electric Nebraska (1982/2025), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) B-Side: “Mansion on the Hill” Peak: 10 AR, 49 CN, 3 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 5.5 video, 58.09 streaming Covered by: The Band (1993), Hank Williams III & Michael Penn (2000), The Hold Steady (2009), Bob Walkenhorst (2010), Natalie Maines with Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite (2013) About the Song:This was the closest the Nebraska album came to a hit. It reached the top 10 on the album-rock chart has become the signature song from the album.The album’s “themes of hopelessness and despair” MM is never “more palpable than on Atlantic City. You can feel the desperation in the voice of a protagonist who is at his wit’s end.” MM “Bruce plunges you into the action like the greatest film noir directors, instantly hooking you into this sordid tale.” UP “Of all the cinematic songs about two-bit criminals that Bruce has written, none is as gripping or evocative as ‘Atlantic City.’” UP The narrator has “learned that there is no comfortable, normal life in Atlantic City.” MM He has “’debts no honest man can pay,’ so he meets a mobster…and agrees to do a job for him.” 33-67 It “was inspired by Louis Malle’s 1980 film of the same name, but it could just as easily come from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather or Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films.” 33-71 “Appropriately, there is a haunting, dirge-like feel to the song, with hints of Celtic sounds coming through on the mandolin. It may just be Bruce playing into a tape deck, but it’s a complete, fully realized sound.” MM |
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Mansion on the HillBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: 10/9/1982 as the B-side of “Atlantic City,” Nebraska (1982), Live in New York City (2000), Electric Nebraska (1982/2025), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) Covered by: Crooked Fingers (2000), David Gray (2007), The National (2008) About the Song:Hank Williams’ “A Mansion on the Hill” inspired this song. It “basically boils down to ‘You’re up there having fun, and I’m down here heartbroken.’ Bruce keeps this contrast and changes the subject from happy/heartbroken to wealthy/poor.” MMThe song “describes a young boy and his sister hiding out in a cornfield, watching the rich people, who are laughing at a party in a mansion that sits above the town’s factories and fields. For the youngsters, it looks like Disneyland, but to us, the locked iron gates represent the kind of class divisions that have spoiled the American Dream.” 33-62 It is “a metaphor for the insatiable hunger that capitalism instills in the souls of Americans.” UP There’s a “wonderful nostalgic feel to the song” MM and it has “a gorgeous folk melody.” MM Bruce also “offers up some really nice harmonica work.” MM |
Johnny 99Bruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: Nebraska (1982), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), The Essential (2015), Electric Nebraska (1982/2025), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) Charted: 10/9/1982 as an album cut Peak: 50 AR Click for codes to charts. Charted by: Johnny Cash (1983), John Hiatt (1997), Los Lobos (2000) About the Song:This is “a murder ballad in the country-rock tradition, but it subverts our usual expectations. Not only is it upbeat, but the murder happens in the first verse.” MM “The title character of Johnny 99 gets laid off from the auto plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, and soon accumulates ‘debts no honest man could pay.’ He gets drunk one night and shoots the night clerk in a botched hold-up.” 33-67 He’s sentenced to 99 years in prison, but instead of pleading for clemency the title character asks the “judge to be executed because he has even worse thoughts circulating in his head.” UPAuthor Brian Hiatt links the song to Jimmie Rodgers’ “Ninety-Nine Years Blues,” a 1932 folk song about a man serving a life sentence. “Springsteen nods to Rodgers with his mad-hatter yodeling throughout ‘Johnny 99,’ banging away on his guitar while dispensing the harrowing story.” UP |
Highway PatrolmanBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: Nebraska (1982), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) Covered by: Johnny Cash (1983), Dar Williams (2000) About the Song:This is “one of the best folk songs Bruce has ever written.” MM “The classic story of the responsible brother and the irresponsible brother has been told a million times. It’s biblical and older than that, but it’s one that Bruce has only tackled once.” MM The narrator is Joe, a cop whose brother, Frankie, is drafted and comes back a heavy drinker. “We just know something bad is going to happen.” MMJoe is called to a roadhouse because of a man wounded in a fight over a woman. It turns out Frank is responsible. Joe “speeds after him and catches up, but eventually lets him go,” MM “caught between his duty to his badge and his soft spot for his brother.” 33-15 Joe insists, “’Man turns his back on his family / He just ain’t no good’ right until the end, but does he really believe it or is he just repeating it to justify his actions.” MM “The insoluable dilemma of that choice is echoed in the fatalistic sadness of the Woody Guthrie-like folk music.” 33-15 In 1991, Sean Penn adapted the song into The Indian Runner, his directoral debut. “It’s not hard to see why. The story…unfolds as a clear narrative with a neatly defined beginning, middle, and end.” UP The problem with the movie is that the image Springsteen crafts “is far better than anything Hollywood could ever create.” UP |
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State TrooperBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: Nebraska (1982), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) Covered by: Deana Carter (2000) About the Song:Ths is the song “that best fits the stark landscapes” MM depicted on the Nebraska album cover. “Bruce has written his share of eerie, even scary songs…but no song in Bruce’s catalogue is as terrifying as ‘State Trooper.’” MM This is what it might sound like “if you could set a psychotic breakdown to music.” MM “The monotonous, maddening acoustic guitar riff just re-enforces the narrator’s own insanity, and Bruce sings the song as a man who is losing it, with the heavy echo and reverb just adding to the ghost-like feel of the song.” MM“We don’t know what the narrator has done, but…he’s not sorry about it.” MM “The narrative details are sparse – we know there’s a guy behind the wheel, and he seems a little crazy, and he’s teetering on the brink of violence. But what stands out more than the words is the intensity of Springsteen’s delivery. He’s in full-on Travis Bickle mode, staring at himself in the rearview mirror, and daring an unseen adversary to challenge him. It’s a wholly convincing and deeply unsettling act of evil transfiguration.” UP His “repeated cry of ‘please don’t stop me’ to the state trooper who is following him is less ‘I don’t want to get caught’ and more ‘Don’t make me kill you when you pull me over.’” MM |
Used CarsBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: Nebraska (1982), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) Covered by: Ani DiFranco (2000) About the Song:Musically this has a very similar melody to the title track. MM It also shares a narrator from “Mansion on the Hill.” He and his sister “resent their father for buying a boring used car instead of an exciting new convertible. They youngsters think it’s a failure of imagination, but we know the financial realities that dicate the choice.” 33-62 It captures that “critical moment in any young person’s life is when you first realize that your parents are flawed human beings.” UP In his book Songs, Bruce calls this “the exciting story of my own personal life.” UP“Bruce has written better working class songs than anyone” MM but this one is “pretty underwhelming.” MM It’s a “generic ‘We’re poor but we’re gonna get rich’ tale without anything really unique to distinguish it.” MM |
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Open All NightBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: 11/22/1982 as a single, Nebraska (1982), Electric Nebraska (1982/2025), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) B-Side: “The Big Payback” Charted: 10/9/1982 as an album cut Peak: 22 AR Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 1.82 video, 5.49 streaming Covered by: Son Volt (2000) About the Song:This is “a Chuck Berry-style rocker” AM “car song about trying to get home to a girlfriend after the late shift at work.” 33-45 This is the only song on Nebraska to prominently feature electric guitar and “that is all fun.” MM “You can just hear the rock song waiting to break out.” MMHowever, it still “fits perfectly on the Nebraska album. There is still desolation on these open roads at night, no matter how much fun they are for this particular narrator.” MM The song “shares lyrics with ‘State Trooper,’ and while both are about a narrator driving on the turnpike alone late at night, they are incredibly different songs. The narrator in ‘Open All Night’ just wants to get his girlfriend Wanda who works at the Bob’s Big Boy.” MM Its interesting how the two songs “show how two people in very similar situations can have wildly different stories.” MM |
My Father’s HouseBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/25/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: Nebraska (1982), Chapter and Verse (2016), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) Covered by: Ben Harper (2000) About the Song:Nine of the songs on Nebraska were recorded in January 1982. Months later, though, Bruce returned to his home studio to record this and “The Big Payback.” This one is “a haunting folk ballad that touches on one of Bruce’s favorite topics.” MM It is “right up there with ‘Mansion on the Hill’ as one of the most autobiographical songs on Nebraska.” MM“The narrator dreams that he’s a child again, running through the trees and brambles till he collapses in his father’s sheltering arms.” 33-62 “The singer seems to think the house itself holds some mystical quality.” MM “But when he awakes and visits the house in real life, the woman who answers says, ‘I’m sorry, son, but no one by that name lives here anymore.’” 33-62 |
Reason to BelieveBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 12/17/1981 to 1/3/1982 in Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: Nebraska (1982), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), Electric Nebraska (1982/2025), Nebraska Live (live, 2025) Covered by: Aimee Mann & Michael Penn (2000) About the Song:“The album closed with Reason to Believe, a song whose hard-luck verses were belied by the chorus – even if the singer couldn’t understand what it was, ‘people find some reason to believe.’” AM “Instead of just being one story like the other songs on the album, ‘Reason to Believe’ tells little snippets of stories and brings them all together with the narrator being struck ‘kind of funny’ that ‘at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.’” MM It is not, however, a judgment on the characters, just an observation that “there are more questions than answers.” MMThe song “leans more towards blues than the other songs on the album, which are more from the folk and country traditions.” MM |
Other Songs from the EraHere are other songs recorded during the Nebraska sessions which were released on various collections, primarily the 1998 Tracks box set. |
Lion’s DenBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 1/25/1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: Tracks (box set, 1998) |
The Big PaybackBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: between March and April 1982 at Thrill Hill East, Bruce Springsteen’s room at Colts Neck, New Jersey Released: 11/22/1982 as the B-side to “Open All Night,” The Essential (2003), Nebraska: Demos & Outtakes (1982/2025) About the Song:9 of the 10 songs on Nebraska were recorded in January 1982. Months later, Bruce recorded two more songs. “My Father’s House” became part of the album while this rockabilly-tinged number, “essentially a lesser ‘Open All Night,’” MM missed the cut. |
My Love Will Not Let You DownBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: May 5-7, 1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: Tracks (box set, 1998), 18 Tracks (1999) About the Song:“This earnest pledge ranks among the very best to somehow not make [it on] record.” UP It is “a driving, glowing rock anthem…that could easily work as a single.” MM “Bruce’s raspy vocals are the perfect match to the guitar-heavy track, and the glistening keyboards add even more hope to the song.” MM After its release on Tracks it became “a central song of the reunion tours that Bruce played with The E Street Band for the next few years.” UPThe narrator “is so dedicated to keeping the titular promise to his love that it’s keeping him up nights.” MM “He is committed 100%. Whether or not the girl will believe him is up in the air, but the song is so energetic and forthright that it would be hard to think she’d have second thoughts.” MM |
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)Bruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/5/1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: Tracks (box set, 1998) About the Song:This song “describes the widow of a Vietnam soldier…The gently rolling country-pop music reinforces the lyrics’ evocation of domesticity, but that only makes the key lines bite harder.” 33-15 |
Wages of SinBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/10/1982 Released: Tracks (box set, 1998) Covered by: Damien Jurardo & Rose Thomas (2000) About the Song:This is “another great moody ballad stuck between albums.” UP It “feels like it belongs in the Nebraska camp, though Springsteen gave it an arrangement that put it in the same ballpark as ‘My Hometown.’” UP |
This Hard LandBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/11/1982; January 1995 at the Hit Factory in New York Released: 1982 version: Tracks (box set, 1998), 1995 version: Greatest Hits (1995), Live in New York City (2000) About the Song:“Bruce is known as a rocker first, but he’s written some incredible folk songs.” MM “With This Hard Land…Bruce makes his definitive entry into the American folk music canon.” MM This “galloping adventure tale” UP “should have been the signature track on the long lost country rock album that Springsteen hinted at making around the margins of Born in the U.S.A.” UP “The sound of ‘This Hard Land’ is so beautiful and clear, from the harmonica and guitar that start the song off to the full band arrangement that kicks in after the first verse.” MMThis tale of “displaced farmers…from Houston to the Rio Grande” 33-63 is inspired by “John Ford’s 1940 film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.” 33-70 It is “a story about two friends who head out into the west and pledge undying loyalty to one another.” UP “Living on and farming the land is near impossible for these characters, but the narrator and Frank are prepared to fight as hard as they can.” MM “The Woody Guthrie influence is obviously here in the lyrics about hard work and western landscapes.” MM “Danny Federici’s organ plants this one firmly in the Jersey Shore. Meanwhile, Roy Bittan’s piano part sounds like something from a Gershwin piece, and its plinking sounds play perfectly against Little Steven’s mandolin. Max Weinberg counts this among his favorite songs the band has ever recorded, and his performance here is quite underrated.” MM |
FrankieBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/14/1982 at the Power Station in New York Released: Tracks (box set, 1998) About the Song:The song turns “incidents from the Old Testament into comic sketches.” 33-71 This is “an old-school soul-music tune about a man telling his ex-lover that he’s been healing his broken heart as if he were Daniel testing his faith in the lion’s den, and now he’s coming back, stronger than ever.” 33-45 |
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Last updated 10/26/2025. |
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