Nebraska Bruce Springsteen (Columbia)
Bruce Springsteen's decision to ditch his E Street Band following the release of his hit double album The River initially ranked up there as one of the most baffling rock'n'roll decisions ever in the early 1980s. After all, the group's 20-song fifth release featured a top 10 hit in the bouncy single Hungry Heart and nobody was questioning whether the New Jersey-based singer was truly worth the hype, for he was proving it with marathon three hour-plus shows.
Nonetheless, Springsteen had darker thoughts on his mind and in the tradition of guitar-picking legends Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, the musician sat down with a guitar, a harmonica and a four-track recorder in the bedroom of his Colts Neck home; 10 songs later, he had created a stark masterpiece that influenced many artists and still resonates to this day.
The eerie, lonesome tones of a harmonica blare out over gentle guitar picking on the opener Nebraska. 'I saw her standing on her front lawn, just a-twirling her baton,' he starkly sings with heaps of foreboding in the air. For this is Springsteen's take on the 1950s murder spree that 19-year-old Charles Starkweather went on with his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate over two months, killing 11 people. 'They wanted to know why I did what I did,' he sings during the song's closing words. 'Well sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world.'
It was a theme that would carry through much of the album. Over a barely-there guitar line and a Springsteen vocal that sounds like a croak, Highway Patrolman tells the first person story of an honest policeman named Joe Roberts who's 'got a brother named Frankie and Frankie ain't no good'. With clear shades of John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men in the writing, Springsteen details the tough choices that Roberts has to make when his Vietnam war veteran brother keeps getting into more and more legal trouble back home.
State Trooper and Johnny 99, the album's surprise choice for a single, were even bleaker. Over a simple, ragged, guitar motif on the former, Springsteen's echoed voice rings out like a mantra as he implores a state trooper not to stop him on the New Jersey turnpike, the clear indication being that something dangerous would take place. On the latter, a near rockabilly riff leads to an emphatic harmonica solo as Springsteen details the story of a man whose murderous crimes leave him begging for the electric chair in front of a judge.