Like all social critics who want to put down American values, this author glorifies Springsteen’s “fictionalized account” of a psychopathic family and criticizes President Reagan’s “storybook myth” of American exceptionalism gained through political and economic liberty. What a dishonest message and a slander of reality ! I wonder if the critic ever considered the possibility that Springsteen is simply blaming the real culprit … his alcoholic and violent father ? If there’s one sure way to bring a family to death and destruction, it’s booze and narcissism.
Fair point. I took my teenage daughter (who’d bought his albums) to see Springsteen at the Millenium Stadium (Cardiff) in 2008. We were expecting energy from the stage, but got lethargy and an expectation of worship from the crowd. This became transmitted during the course of the evening until in the end, there was not much of a reaction apart from half-hearted applause and Springsteen left the stage without an encore.
My daughter was perplexed, and i found it very difficult to explain what she’d just witnessed. Perhaps it was just one gig too many on a long tour, but it was incredibly disrespectful and she’s never listened to him since.
Springsteen is clearly working through his demons in his music, and that might well resonate with many who’ve experienced similar in their lives, but that night, the demons got the better of him.
You mean this very concert, where it clearly says he did do an encore, comprising a pretty decent 27 song concert?
Also there’s this article which seems to think very differently to your ‘half-hearted applause’….
I mean, sure, I’m all for genuine criticism of an artist if effort becomes a visible problem, but I think you’re clearly reaching here. Probably just another annoyingly vapid ‘oh, I hate how Bruce is political now’ criticism, desperate to criticise literally anything about the man other than his actual music.
He provided insight on his own experience of a concert. You seem to be rather animated by your own prejudices to assume what this commenter thinks – which makes you the annoyingly vapid person, ironically.
Did it ever occur to you that they ain’t going to confirm in the records if it was a poor concert?
When any musician or other from the Entertainment world start preaching I turn off.
I would like them to understand that it’s the music and lyrics that move one to tears or laughter.
Do me favour and become a politician then I can add my two cents worth when debating any given topic (platform) Bruce wishes to speak from.
Until then let the music continue as that is why I know something about this man.
I still like his music.
Yea, I couldn’t help but feel the vitriol in the author’s words against The Gipper, who sought to bring out the best in America and its people. The author never mentions Jimmy Carter, who presided over the nightmare of stagflation. The economy boomed after Reagan’s policies were implemented, just like when JFK did the same.
For every downtrodden worker who lost their job, during the recession, there were dozens of happy and prosperous families who work hard, save their money for a rainy day, mow their lawns on Saturday and go to church on Sunday. You can focus your attention on either group, but don’t try to bamboozle people into believing your made up history.
“Ronald Reagan was two years into his first term after the Republicans swept the working-class heartlands of America in a landslide victory. The president believed storybook myths about his country: that its fortunes had been made by pioneering men and women on the western frontier, free from the restraining hand of the federal government. Reagan’s America was like the cowboy B-movies in which he had once starred: a land of heroes, opportunity, and sunny Hollywood optimism.”
This is hardly vitriol. And what happened to people is hardly “made up history”. Reagan may have tried to bring out the best in people but others were hurt. Your portrait of Americans mowing their lawns and going to church seems to be far removed from reality. But that’s life in America, I guess, the illusion over reality. And you wonder why things aren’t working. The opioid addiction rate; is that from people inhaling to many grass clippings?
I think it is a little of “both/and.” I live in Appalachia and my neighbors all cut their grass and go to church on Sundays. Which would be because I live in an upscale area.
And just down the road I can also find the shacks and beat-up row houses spawned by the opioid crisis.
IMHO, America is not f%#$ed. it is just not perfect. Much like the human condition since god was a kid.
To quote the Eagles: “Call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.”
“Your portrait of Americans mowing their lawns and going to church seems to be far removed from reality.” Actually, though it’s certainly not universal it’s quite typical. The fact that you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s an illusion. Drive through as many of the nation’s tens of millions of suburban cul-de-sacs as you can on any Saturday in the summer. Guess what you’ll hear — lawn mowers. The left’s vision of America as a drug-riddled kingdom of misery and grief is the illusion. Perfect? No. There are problems (many created by the left, which has a vested interest in tearing down the system). But the vast majority of us are living decent lives, definitely much, much, much better than humans in virtually any other period of history.
“The fact that you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s an illusion. “
Its not that I don’t like it. It’s just an absurd metaphor for the health of a nation and a very cliched one as well. I don’t think anyone’s trying to say that America’s a drug- riddled kingdom of misery by writing about those who struggle. Whether it’s their own doing is not really relevant in regard to the discussion about “Nebraska”. It’s not, as Warren said, made up history. As you can see here among the comments, some people lived it. I don’t understand why writing about these people is seen as some sort of left agenda, especially in 1982 when the world wasn’t so clearly divided into left and right. In many ways the right wing commentators here are playing the leftist game of blaming someone on the sins of their fathers, in this case it’s blaming Springsteen for something he wrote in his youth when he was 33 years old. They seem to lash out at anything they perceive as leftist in the most simplistic terms.
For the Left, everything is about the agenda. Everything is about remaking society to their own specifications, which of course start with them being in charge. They’ll distort and exaggerate every problem to move the narrative where they want it to go.
And thanks for sharing Rehoboth Organic Farms and Red Napier.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Dude, we’re you even alive in the 80s? Where are you getting your information about one of the most exciting, optimistic, prosperous, downright fun periods in American modern history? Springsteen was on MTV singing “hey baby” at Courtney Cox, ruling the new medium, getting massively rich, and having a blast making the best of a great time. I was in my 20s throughout that period and, trust me, it truly was “morning in America”. We would have laughed our a**es off at narcissistic Millennial nihilism. Go, as the kids say, touch some grass.
Was that you Brett? The very, very book smart, pimply faced nerd who couldn’t get a date with a girl, wishing the captain of the football team ill will, as he enjoyed the fruits of his particular talents?
I remember you. I was somewhere in the middle trying to figure it all out. Still am, actually. Besides, who got the last laugh? The football captain most likely got married, divorced and became a drunk while the computer nerd invested in Microsoft and became a billionaire nerd cheering for a senile, life-long pathologic lying grifter to become president.
Agreed, Allison. I was there and yes, there was bleakness but it seemed much easier to be happy. People can say what they will about Reagan and his policies or the ’80’s in general: living back then was head and shoulders better than what is happening today.
Buena Vista
1 year ago
For a time, Bruce was a most eloquent spokesman for the hardworking people of Nebraska, and their brethren from coast to coast. As a high-school grad trying to find his way in the world, Born to Run (the album) resonated with me like no other music of the seventies.
That era passed; Bruce got woke. Now, we don’t pay him any mind.
Hi. I think Springsteen is no different now than he was then. If anything, he has grown so much artistically. His current music is as resonant as ever. Really listen and you may reap some reward. The song “Western Stars” alone is a masterpiece. It is ostensibly about an aging b-movie actor in Los Angeles but it actually goes far deeper —That aging b-movie actor is him. It is me. It is you. It is us. It faces not only our own mortality but that of a society built on artifice in a world facing apocalypse. That world (our world) is on its way out but no matter, the universe will still be there and the stars will still shine and, ultimately (as he writes in the album’s closer), “It’s better to have loved”. Always with a great and timeless artist, it’s best to go past the media noise and polarization to truly see and understand the work. It is work that will be remembered for generations. I am grateful it’s been a part of my life for decades and am richer for it.
1982….the last of the hard years I lived on the road, on foot, mostly broke, just out there hitching around, walking and sitting and standing alone mostly, hitched 50,000 miles in a recount I did at the end adding up the miles of the long hauls….5 years total living on foot on the road- and it was a terrible recession, people would have killed to have a proper job.
I can feel those times reading this article, just going somewhere, but not having anywhere to go really, or go back to…..and I remember the heartlands, and the South, and they sort of had the feel the writer did so well conveying in the early article. But then so did the West – I guess it is the feel of the down and out and of people who are going nowhere, that this miserable place and life is as good as it ever will get for them.
Everyone did drugs and drank as much as they could afford to – but I was at the low level social, the fringe of the road, so mixed with the more lost element – they were the ones who would deal with you, because you had no way to get into a middle class scene. You were just another drifter living a hard way.
I can just feel that feel from the article triggering it – it was so hard – hard as rock, it would wear you down, just alone, never safe, did not go into buildings much because you have to spend money to go into buildings, and I never had much. The word which hangs there – ‘Acedia’…… that is what the feel of the lower classes, that is why they were such F*ck Ups, in trouble, stoned and drunk…. they just did not care, life was gray, and it is what it is…and getting high got you out of that gray dreariness…..and you felt something that was not just gray… I saw a lot on the road, I had unlimited time to just be out there sitting on the ground, sleeping on the ground, alone, and you think a lot, and try to keep your crushing aloneness from wrecking you, and life goes on around you, mostly the fringe and the damaged people, and the ones stuck – like the writer describes – they are everywhere.
That was more interesting than the article, Aaron. Thank you.
Richard Parker
1 year ago
Still my favourite of Springsteen’s albums: it’s raw in sound and content.
From when I first encountered it in the late 1980s to this day it persists I’m my mind and I listen to it quite often. I think it’s emblematic of a story too often glossed over by politicos of all stripes.
Thanks for an interesting and reflective piece. In some ways it’s hard to believe that “Nebraska” is turning 40; then again, it has timeless qualities to its narrative, making the subjects with which it treats as relevant as ever.
Brett H
1 year ago
America abandons people like it does old cars. Which means it abandons the past, or anything that doesn’t fit the new dream.
I understand where you’re coming from, but does it mean that “Nebraska” is a lie, or meaningless? How exactly does it undermine “Nebraska”?
Kimberly Schreder
1 year ago
I grew up in the south, not the Heartlands, but experienced the dispair and poverty of the seventies and early eighties which is why so much of Springsteen’s music resonates for me and much of my generation. I sent this article to my son and daughter, both in their thirties, neither of whom have experienced anything but abundance and affluence in their lifetimes until recently. I don’t like Springsteen’s politics, and I don’t understand how he doesn’t get the policies he supports help create poverty. But I’m grateful his songs record the American experience of those who feel forgotten–those Hillary Clinton called “deplorables”.
Brett Baker
1 year ago
Er, the Rust Belt began in the mid-70s. It was a big part of the reason Reagan won the 1980 election.
B Starek
1 year ago
Trump resurrected industries in the heartlands which Biden then burried again… and Springsteen sang for Biden while vilifying Trump.
Foreman says, “these jobs are going, boys
And they ain’t coming back
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown”
Yea, why doesn’t he comment on the tremendous success of the deep blue inner cities, where they actually implement the policies that Springstein supposedly endorses?
Respectfully, never “got” the guy. And didn’t consider him a “boss” let alone THEE “Boss.”
Musical tastes are highly subjective and it is clear that BS’s propensity for a morbid view of reality appeals to the reviewer.
Fair enough.
Many — myself among them — would counter that the American experience in almost every era is orders of magnitude above all other socio-political experiments post ark.
Darkness, pain, suffering, and sorrow are common fodder across human experience. These are countered by light, joy, hope, faith, and Love. The latter set sustains us while the former seeks to consume us.
If I met Bruce and could speak with him across the gaps in my read of him, I’m sure that I would gain the context required to gain better comprehension of his reality as penned and played.
But I maintain that both America — and Life itself — hold greater treasures than that which is forthtold in “Nebraska.”
“Since the Seventies, the wages of white working-class men not only flattened, but declined.” <Sigh> It’s not about melanin content. The extreme inflation of the late 70’s and the unemployment of the early 80’s effected all Americans. As for the flattening and decline of wages since the 70’s, that reversed during the Trump years (until COVID). Of course, Springsteen is someone that sings about the despair, but also supports the policies that create it and hates those who would implement changes to reverse it.
Anton van der Merwe
1 year ago
Great article. That magnificent album makes even more sense to me now.
Niels Georg Bach Christensen
1 year ago
Looking back on many of Springsteens classic songs : The Promised Land, Badlands among a few you will se that they contain an universal populism, where the center in the narrative is the indviduel against society. Not on like many of Trumps supporters.
“The president believed storybook myths about his country: that its fortunes had been made by pioneering men and women on the western frontier, free from the restraining hand of the federal government.”
The writer shows his personal agenda with this statement, and it tallies with Springsteen’s politics. I quite liked his music but thought the bent of his lyrics were the usual left wing justifications for people being lazy or violent because of their circumstances. But the vast, vast majority brought up in similar circumstances aren’t lazy and violent. I wasn’t aware of Nebraska as he’d already veered too far into the mainstream to maintain my attention, but the article confirms my view of Springsteens naive politics of the ‘victim’.
“Nebraska” is a series of stories. Springsteen had said that the stories were partly inspired by historian Howard Zinn‘s book A People’s History of the United States. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s a work that exists in the field of art, of creating stories about other lives. I don’t think it has anything to do with left wing justifications. It’s probably true that the vast majority in similar circumstances aren’t lazy and violent. But how is singing and writing about people who are lost suggesting it’s justification for laziness and violence. When “Nebraska” came out he had not veered into the mainstream. This was a personal work for him that probably contained some risk of acceptance. How does this story tally with Springsteen’s politics? What exactly were his politics then?
Daniel Lee
1 year ago
Utter leftist dark-spirited defeatism from beginning to end — Springsteen’s imaginary “Nebraska” AND this doom and gloom essay. The left — eternally committed to a top-down managed society that fails everywhere it is attempted — is perpetually eager to find and encourage horror and misery in its opposite: free people pursuing their own interests without a nanny-state telling them how they’re allowed to do it. Nearly every social and economic trouble beginning in the 70s can be traced directly to decades of the left’s intentional undermining of American hearty optimism, which they then blame for the social collapse they themselves create and encourage for their own ends. Dour artists like Springsteen are just a part of the drag-us-down machine that runs the legacy news media, Hollywood, the music industry, and education that relentlessly pushes to destroy our system because it doesn’t rise to their adolescent standards of perfection. (Which of course requires THEM to set us straight.) Same old. Ignore this BS.
“The left — eternally committed to a top-down managed society that fails everywhere it is attempted — is perpetually eager to find and encourage horror and misery” I would not, by any means, regard “Nebraska” as a leftist tool to destroy the system. I don’t think there’s any mention in any of the songs about holding someone else accountable. The recordings are totally apolitical. These are existential accounts of people living in darkness. You accuse Springsteen of being part of the drag-us-down machine, but he released these songs in 1982. That has nothing to do with what’s going on now. No one’s trying to set anyone straight with these songs. Something that did happen in the 70’s was to shine a light on the side of society that was hidden. What it exposed wasn’t very nice, but it was a fact. It didn’t mean society was bad. It just suggested that the truth should be faced if we were to have a modern, healthy society. “Nebraska” was one of those exposures. Ironically, here we are in 2022 and we still have people chaffing at the facts.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, the Left produces is apolitical. It’s an all encompassing mindset that defines itself completely by its opposition to the existing order and its own moral right to change it to its own preferences with or without the consent of the rest of the culture. I happen to like Springsteen’s artistry, and that of many leftist artists and entertainers, but never lose sight of the fact that it’s almost always put in service to the cause.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, the Left produces is apolitical.”
So you’re still insisting “Nebraska” is a product of the left? I really find that hard to understand. So what reason do you have for thinking that?
Last edited 1 year ago by Brett H
Cho Jinn
1 year ago
Like many artistic types, the self loathing often commensurate with success has overtaken him.
Bob Smalser
1 year ago
Right. The factory worker’s kid from Freehold now makes up for lost time by flaunting his wealth in cars, stables and horses. Wonder what his charitable contributions look like.
Sisyphus Jones
1 year ago
Nebraska is one of my favorite albums of all time. I know it is because it has such emotional blunt-force that I can only listen to it every two or three years. I can’t imagine a greater offense against such a seminal work of musical art than to have a young social critic turn it into a tortured metaphor for his powerlessness over the urge to turn even sacred objects into bias-confirming social justice narratives. Zach, I have some advice for you. Forget everything you’ve learned in the last fifteen years. Put on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Don’t make the record listen to you. Listen to the record.
Paula G
1 year ago
Don’t you wish he and Barrack would use their address books to make real change for Chicagoan’s and Nebraskans? Was being a community organizer something you did to pad your resume? Certainly Chicago still needs help and his contacts and moneyed friends could do a lot more than take prime property in Chicago for a museum that will hire a few cashiers, guards and cafeteria workers at low wages.
Or they can sit on their Hawaii properties and Springsteen can find the ponies for his daughter’s pony set lifestyle…
Like all social critics who want to put down American values, this author glorifies Springsteen’s “fictionalized account” of a psychopathic family and criticizes President Reagan’s “storybook myth” of American exceptionalism gained through political and economic liberty. What a dishonest message and a slander of reality ! I wonder if the critic ever considered the possibility that Springsteen is simply blaming the real culprit … his alcoholic and violent father ? If there’s one sure way to bring a family to death and destruction, it’s booze and narcissism.
Fair point. I took my teenage daughter (who’d bought his albums) to see Springsteen at the Millenium Stadium (Cardiff) in 2008. We were expecting energy from the stage, but got lethargy and an expectation of worship from the crowd. This became transmitted during the course of the evening until in the end, there was not much of a reaction apart from half-hearted applause and Springsteen left the stage without an encore.
My daughter was perplexed, and i found it very difficult to explain what she’d just witnessed. Perhaps it was just one gig too many on a long tour, but it was incredibly disrespectful and she’s never listened to him since.
Springsteen is clearly working through his demons in his music, and that might well resonate with many who’ve experienced similar in their lives, but that night, the demons got the better of him.
You mean this very concert, where it clearly says he did do an encore, comprising a pretty decent 27 song concert?
Also there’s this article which seems to think very differently to your ‘half-hearted applause’….
I mean, sure, I’m all for genuine criticism of an artist if effort becomes a visible problem, but I think you’re clearly reaching here. Probably just another annoyingly vapid ‘oh, I hate how Bruce is political now’ criticism, desperate to criticise literally anything about the man other than his actual music.
Thanks for correcting a biased review. Maybe Steve was just bored.
Easily done at a Springsteen gig, to be honest.
If you don’t like him, then yes.
He provided insight on his own experience of a concert. You seem to be rather animated by your own prejudices to assume what this commenter thinks – which makes you the annoyingly vapid person, ironically.
Did it ever occur to you that they ain’t going to confirm in the records if it was a poor concert?
“Springsteen left the stage without an encore.”
That isn’t insight.
He outright lied that there was no encore to try support his argument? And you call it ‘insight’? Yeah, uhh, okay….
They DO record the set list though including the encores … which according to him didn’t happen.
So…
When any musician or other from the Entertainment world start preaching I turn off.
I would like them to understand that it’s the music and lyrics that move one to tears or laughter.
Do me favour and become a politician then I can add my two cents worth when debating any given topic (platform) Bruce wishes to speak from.
Until then let the music continue as that is why I know something about this man.
I still like his music.
Erm … THIS concert?
Setlist
From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)
(Tour debut)
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Radio Nowhere
No Surrender
Lonesome Day
The Promised Land
Play Video
Blinded by the Light
Magic
Atlantic City
The River
Gypsy Biker
Darlington County
Because the Night
She’s the One
Livin’ in the Future
Mary’s Place
Working on the Highway
Devil’s Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
Encore:
Jungleland
Thunder Road
Born to Run
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
American Land
Yea, I couldn’t help but feel the vitriol in the author’s words against The Gipper, who sought to bring out the best in America and its people. The author never mentions Jimmy Carter, who presided over the nightmare of stagflation. The economy boomed after Reagan’s policies were implemented, just like when JFK did the same.
For every downtrodden worker who lost their job, during the recession, there were dozens of happy and prosperous families who work hard, save their money for a rainy day, mow their lawns on Saturday and go to church on Sunday. You can focus your attention on either group, but don’t try to bamboozle people into believing your made up history.
“Ronald Reagan was two years into his first term after the Republicans swept the working-class heartlands of America in a landslide victory. The president believed storybook myths about his country: that its fortunes had been made by pioneering men and women on the western frontier, free from the restraining hand of the federal government. Reagan’s America was like the cowboy B-movies in which he had once starred: a land of heroes, opportunity, and sunny Hollywood optimism.”
This is hardly vitriol. And what happened to people is hardly “made up history”. Reagan may have tried to bring out the best in people but others were hurt. Your portrait of Americans mowing their lawns and going to church seems to be far removed from reality. But that’s life in America, I guess, the illusion over reality. And you wonder why things aren’t working. The opioid addiction rate; is that from people inhaling to many grass clippings?
I think it is a little of “both/and.” I live in Appalachia and my neighbors all cut their grass and go to church on Sundays. Which would be because I live in an upscale area.
And just down the road I can also find the shacks and beat-up row houses spawned by the opioid crisis.
IMHO, America is not f%#$ed. it is just not perfect. Much like the human condition since god was a kid.
To quote the Eagles: “Call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.”
“Your portrait of Americans mowing their lawns and going to church seems to be far removed from reality.”
Actually, though it’s certainly not universal it’s quite typical. The fact that you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s an illusion. Drive through as many of the nation’s tens of millions of suburban cul-de-sacs as you can on any Saturday in the summer. Guess what you’ll hear — lawn mowers. The left’s vision of America as a drug-riddled kingdom of misery and grief is the illusion. Perfect? No. There are problems (many created by the left, which has a vested interest in tearing down the system). But the vast majority of us are living decent lives, definitely much, much, much better than humans in virtually any other period of history.
“The fact that you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s an illusion. “
Its not that I don’t like it. It’s just an absurd metaphor for the health of a nation and a very cliched one as well. I don’t think anyone’s trying to say that America’s a drug- riddled kingdom of misery by writing about those who struggle. Whether it’s their own doing is not really relevant in regard to the discussion about “Nebraska”. It’s not, as Warren said, made up history. As you can see here among the comments, some people lived it. I don’t understand why writing about these people is seen as some sort of left agenda, especially in 1982 when the world wasn’t so clearly divided into left and right. In many ways the right wing commentators here are playing the leftist game of blaming someone on the sins of their fathers, in this case it’s blaming Springsteen for something he wrote in his youth when he was 33 years old. They seem to lash out at anything they perceive as leftist in the most simplistic terms.
For the Left, everything is about the agenda. Everything is about remaking society to their own specifications, which of course start with them being in charge. They’ll distort and exaggerate every problem to move the narrative where they want it to go.
Nice. Thanks for sharing
And thanks for sharing Rehoboth Organic Farms and Red Napier.
Dude, we’re you even alive in the 80s? Where are you getting your information about one of the most exciting, optimistic, prosperous, downright fun periods in American modern history? Springsteen was on MTV singing “hey baby” at Courtney Cox, ruling the new medium, getting massively rich, and having a blast making the best of a great time. I was in my 20s throughout that period and, trust me, it truly was “morning in America”. We would have laughed our a**es off at narcissistic Millennial nihilism. Go, as the kids say, touch some grass.
The 80’s. Yes, I was there, too. I remember you: loud, arrogant, ignorant, spoilt, unaware, greedy and uncaring.
Aw, did we spoil communism for you?
Was that you Brett? The very, very book smart, pimply faced nerd who couldn’t get a date with a girl, wishing the captain of the football team ill will, as he enjoyed the fruits of his particular talents?
I remember you. I was somewhere in the middle trying to figure it all out. Still am, actually. Besides, who got the last laugh? The football captain most likely got married, divorced and became a drunk while the computer nerd invested in Microsoft and became a billionaire nerd cheering for a senile, life-long pathologic lying grifter to become president.
Agreed, Allison. I was there and yes, there was bleakness but it seemed much easier to be happy. People can say what they will about Reagan and his policies or the ’80’s in general: living back then was head and shoulders better than what is happening today.
For a time, Bruce was a most eloquent spokesman for the hardworking people of Nebraska, and their brethren from coast to coast. As a high-school grad trying to find his way in the world, Born to Run (the album) resonated with me like no other music of the seventies.
That era passed; Bruce got woke. Now, we don’t pay him any mind.
Hi. I think Springsteen is no different now than he was then. If anything, he has grown so much artistically. His current music is as resonant as ever. Really listen and you may reap some reward. The song “Western Stars” alone is a masterpiece. It is ostensibly about an aging b-movie actor in Los Angeles but it actually goes far deeper —That aging b-movie actor is him. It is me. It is you. It is us. It faces not only our own mortality but that of a society built on artifice in a world facing apocalypse. That world (our world) is on its way out but no matter, the universe will still be there and the stars will still shine and, ultimately (as he writes in the album’s closer), “It’s better to have loved”. Always with a great and timeless artist, it’s best to go past the media noise and polarization to truly see and understand the work. It is work that will be remembered for generations. I am grateful it’s been a part of my life for decades and am richer for it.
1982….the last of the hard years I lived on the road, on foot, mostly broke, just out there hitching around, walking and sitting and standing alone mostly, hitched 50,000 miles in a recount I did at the end adding up the miles of the long hauls….5 years total living on foot on the road- and it was a terrible recession, people would have killed to have a proper job.
I can feel those times reading this article, just going somewhere, but not having anywhere to go really, or go back to…..and I remember the heartlands, and the South, and they sort of had the feel the writer did so well conveying in the early article. But then so did the West – I guess it is the feel of the down and out and of people who are going nowhere, that this miserable place and life is as good as it ever will get for them.
Everyone did drugs and drank as much as they could afford to – but I was at the low level social, the fringe of the road, so mixed with the more lost element – they were the ones who would deal with you, because you had no way to get into a middle class scene. You were just another drifter living a hard way.
I can just feel that feel from the article triggering it – it was so hard – hard as rock, it would wear you down, just alone, never safe, did not go into buildings much because you have to spend money to go into buildings, and I never had much. The word which hangs there – ‘Acedia’…… that is what the feel of the lower classes, that is why they were such F*ck Ups, in trouble, stoned and drunk…. they just did not care, life was gray, and it is what it is…and getting high got you out of that gray dreariness…..and you felt something that was not just gray… I saw a lot on the road, I had unlimited time to just be out there sitting on the ground, sleeping on the ground, alone, and you think a lot, and try to keep your crushing aloneness from wrecking you, and life goes on around you, mostly the fringe and the damaged people, and the ones stuck – like the writer describes – they are everywhere.
A very worthwhile footnote to a god article
That was more interesting than the article, Aaron. Thank you.
Still my favourite of Springsteen’s albums: it’s raw in sound and content.
From when I first encountered it in the late 1980s to this day it persists I’m my mind and I listen to it quite often. I think it’s emblematic of a story too often glossed over by politicos of all stripes.
Thanks for an interesting and reflective piece. In some ways it’s hard to believe that “Nebraska” is turning 40; then again, it has timeless qualities to its narrative, making the subjects with which it treats as relevant as ever.
America abandons people like it does old cars. Which means it abandons the past, or anything that doesn’t fit the new dream.
Calls them “deplorables”.
Exactly.
Man of the people charging £380 to stand in a field to watch him. Traded in his credibility for one last cash grab. Sad.
What does that have to do with “Nebraska”?
It undermines his entire career.
I understand where you’re coming from, but does it mean that “Nebraska” is a lie, or meaningless? How exactly does it undermine “Nebraska”?
I grew up in the south, not the Heartlands, but experienced the dispair and poverty of the seventies and early eighties which is why so much of Springsteen’s music resonates for me and much of my generation. I sent this article to my son and daughter, both in their thirties, neither of whom have experienced anything but abundance and affluence in their lifetimes until recently. I don’t like Springsteen’s politics, and I don’t understand how he doesn’t get the policies he supports help create poverty. But I’m grateful his songs record the American experience of those who feel forgotten–those Hillary Clinton called “deplorables”.
Er, the Rust Belt began in the mid-70s. It was a big part of the reason Reagan won the 1980 election.
Trump resurrected industries in the heartlands which Biden then burried again… and Springsteen sang for Biden while vilifying Trump.
Foreman says, “these jobs are going, boys
And they ain’t coming back
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown”
Yea, why doesn’t he comment on the tremendous success of the deep blue inner cities, where they actually implement the policies that Springstein supposedly endorses?
Exactly what industries did trump resurrect?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/07/10/in-trumps-first-30-months-manufacturing-up-by-314000-jobs-over-obama-what-states-are-hot/?sh=713f36f42677
One of the first things Biden did was revoke the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline which which would have been a boon for jobs in a region of high unemployment and would have carried 830,000 barrels per day of Alberta oil sands crude to… Nebraska
Respectfully, never “got” the guy. And didn’t consider him a “boss” let alone THEE “Boss.”
Musical tastes are highly subjective and it is clear that BS’s propensity for a morbid view of reality appeals to the reviewer.
Fair enough.
Many — myself among them — would counter that the American experience in almost every era is orders of magnitude above all other socio-political experiments post ark.
Darkness, pain, suffering, and sorrow are common fodder across human experience. These are countered by light, joy, hope, faith, and Love. The latter set sustains us while the former seeks to consume us.
If I met Bruce and could speak with him across the gaps in my read of him, I’m sure that I would gain the context required to gain better comprehension of his reality as penned and played.
But I maintain that both America — and Life itself — hold greater treasures than that which is forthtold in “Nebraska.”
Well said
“Since the Seventies, the wages of white working-class men not only flattened, but declined.”
<Sigh> It’s not about melanin content. The extreme inflation of the late 70’s and the unemployment of the early 80’s effected all Americans. As for the flattening and decline of wages since the 70’s, that reversed during the Trump years (until COVID).
Of course, Springsteen is someone that sings about the despair, but also supports the policies that create it and hates those who would implement changes to reverse it.
Great article. That magnificent album makes even more sense to me now.
Looking back on many of Springsteens classic songs : The Promised Land, Badlands among a few you will se that they contain an universal populism, where the center in the narrative is the indviduel against society. Not on like many of Trumps supporters.
Well said !
“The president believed storybook myths about his country: that its fortunes had been made by pioneering men and women on the western frontier, free from the restraining hand of the federal government.”
The writer shows his personal agenda with this statement, and it tallies with Springsteen’s politics. I quite liked his music but thought the bent of his lyrics were the usual left wing justifications for people being lazy or violent because of their circumstances. But the vast, vast majority brought up in similar circumstances aren’t lazy and violent. I wasn’t aware of Nebraska as he’d already veered too far into the mainstream to maintain my attention, but the article confirms my view of Springsteens naive politics of the ‘victim’.
“Nebraska” is a series of stories. Springsteen had said that the stories were partly inspired by historian Howard Zinn‘s book A People’s History of the United States. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s a work that exists in the field of art, of creating stories about other lives. I don’t think it has anything to do with left wing justifications. It’s probably true that the vast majority in similar circumstances aren’t lazy and violent. But how is singing and writing about people who are lost suggesting it’s justification for laziness and violence. When “Nebraska” came out he had not veered into the mainstream. This was a personal work for him that probably contained some risk of acceptance. How does this story tally with Springsteen’s politics? What exactly were his politics then?
Utter leftist dark-spirited defeatism from beginning to end — Springsteen’s imaginary “Nebraska” AND this doom and gloom essay. The left — eternally committed to a top-down managed society that fails everywhere it is attempted — is perpetually eager to find and encourage horror and misery in its opposite: free people pursuing their own interests without a nanny-state telling them how they’re allowed to do it. Nearly every social and economic trouble beginning in the 70s can be traced directly to decades of the left’s intentional undermining of American hearty optimism, which they then blame for the social collapse they themselves create and encourage for their own ends. Dour artists like Springsteen are just a part of the drag-us-down machine that runs the legacy news media, Hollywood, the music industry, and education that relentlessly pushes to destroy our system because it doesn’t rise to their adolescent standards of perfection. (Which of course requires THEM to set us straight.) Same old. Ignore this BS.
“The left — eternally committed to a top-down managed society that fails everywhere it is attempted — is perpetually eager to find and encourage horror and misery”
I would not, by any means, regard “Nebraska” as a leftist tool to destroy the system. I don’t think there’s any mention in any of the songs about holding someone else accountable. The recordings are totally apolitical. These are existential accounts of people living in darkness. You accuse Springsteen of being part of the drag-us-down machine, but he released these songs in 1982. That has nothing to do with what’s going on now. No one’s trying to set anyone straight with these songs. Something that did happen in the 70’s was to shine a light on the side of society that was hidden. What it exposed wasn’t very nice, but it was a fact. It didn’t mean society was bad. It just suggested that the truth should be faced if we were to have a modern, healthy society. “Nebraska” was one of those exposures. Ironically, here we are in 2022 and we still have people chaffing at the facts.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, the Left produces is apolitical. It’s an all encompassing mindset that defines itself completely by its opposition to the existing order and its own moral right to change it to its own preferences with or without the consent of the rest of the culture. I happen to like Springsteen’s artistry, and that of many leftist artists and entertainers, but never lose sight of the fact that it’s almost always put in service to the cause.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, the Left produces is apolitical.”
So you’re still insisting “Nebraska” is a product of the left? I really find that hard to understand. So what reason do you have for thinking that?
Like many artistic types, the self loathing often commensurate with success has overtaken him.
Right. The factory worker’s kid from Freehold now makes up for lost time by flaunting his wealth in cars, stables and horses. Wonder what his charitable contributions look like.
Nebraska is one of my favorite albums of all time. I know it is because it has such emotional blunt-force that I can only listen to it every two or three years. I can’t imagine a greater offense against such a seminal work of musical art than to have a young social critic turn it into a tortured metaphor for his powerlessness over the urge to turn even sacred objects into bias-confirming social justice narratives. Zach, I have some advice for you. Forget everything you’ve learned in the last fifteen years. Put on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Don’t make the record listen to you. Listen to the record.
Don’t you wish he and Barrack would use their address books to make real change for Chicagoan’s and Nebraskans? Was being a community organizer something you did to pad your resume? Certainly Chicago still needs help and his contacts and moneyed friends could do a lot more than take prime property in Chicago for a museum that will hire a few cashiers, guards and cafeteria workers at low wages.
Or they can sit on their Hawaii properties and Springsteen can find the ponies for his daughter’s pony set lifestyle…