Why We Can’t Stop Arguing About Bruce Springsteen’s 'Nebraska'
was always an album that people loved to argue about. So it makes sense that we’re arguing about it now.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 beenon this classic 1982 acoustic album, and how it could have been different if he’d gotten the E Street Band involved. That’s why the Springsteen arguments are blowing up like the Chicken Man.gave great entertainment value whether you loved it or hated it, because it was so intensely fun to debate. In the movie’s funniest scene, we hear Jimmy Iovine over the phone, screaming at manager Jon Landau over how idiotic it is to release this folk record. There’s also a moment where Landau says he’s going to play it for Iovine and Stevie Nicks; tragically, the movie does not depict Stevie’s reaction. The movie has Oscar-bait performances from Jeremy Allen White as the Boss and Jeremy Strong as Landau. But it’s a divisive movie, as befits a divisive album, and even those of us who lovedcan find plenty to bitch about. It’s a whole movie of men talking about Bruce Springsteen’s problems, one of whom is Bruce. There’s 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.story — the evil corporate suits screaming, “It’ll never sell,” while the renegade rocker replies, “An artist’s gotta do what an artist’s gotta do.” But that’s why it makes such a great legend. That’s why there’s a movie about. was so comically unsuitable for airplay. In the movie, Springsteen drives listening to Foreigner’s “Urgent” and Santana’s “Winning,” two ubiquitous radio hits in 1981. The whole album is full of sweaty men driving around alone at night, praying for some rock & roll salvation on the radio. But, giving the kind of basic crowd-pleasing Springsteen moves that Springsteen himself was refusing to deliver. “Hurts So Good” and “Jack and Diane” were obvious Boss-esque hits from the Coug, with more fromcame out — but still in the middle of a nine-week run at Number One. For guys like Mellencamp and Adams, hearing, 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,became a hit anyway, because Billy ended up filling the Springsteen void — the main reason “Pressure” and “Allentown” became such big hits was they were the next best thing to the AOR-friendly Springsteen songs that the Boss wasn’t serving. ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ Has Divided the Film Critic Communityin late 1982: just Billy Joel’s name, a fist clutching a wrench, and the complete lyrics of “Allentown.” No way would he have gotten away with that ad if Springsteen had thrown his base a bone or two on. “Pressure” was pretty damn uncommercial by Billy’s standards — an ode to the struggles of rock stars to get their dealers on the phone, with the singer gnashing his teeth like he’s trapped in the final half-hour ofdoesn’t mention cocaine once, so he probably did his research by asking the big shots at Elaine’s.) But compared toat all, which was genuinely shocking at the time, considering that it was the new Bruce album. “I think it’s gonna do one of two things,” a radio tip-sheet expert predicted in“Either it’s gonna continue a trend toward softer, more personal music being accepted by radio, or it’s gonna be a complete bomb.” My local rock station WBCN, in the Springsteen stronghold of Boston, played “Open All Night” for about a week and then gave up. The song had an electric guitar and a Chuck Berry riff, plus an anomalously upbeat mood , but no chorus, sounding dim on the radio. It fizzled at #22 on the Billboard rock “Top Tracks” chart, a certified dud, with even lower placements for “Atlantic City” and “Johnny 99.” That week, the top albums at rock radio were Rush , Don Henley , Bad Company, Kenny Loggins, Steve Winwood, and Men at Work. is the all-time test where that theory fails. He couldn’t get this played on the radio even though people wereit. After debuting at #29, it zoomed right to #4 the next week, a fast seller by 1982 standards. It peaked at #3, behind Cougar, Fleetwood Mac, and Steve Miller, just ahead of Michael McDonald. But radio wasn’t biting. The movie has a brief mocking glimpse of MTV, just for a cheap laugh, when Springsteen is flipping channels betweenafter rock radio completely rejected it. The fledgling network picked up on “Atlantic City,” which had a gritty video that Springsteen didn’t appear in. At MTV they played “Atlantic City” 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 — rock radio wasn’t 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 madeall wrong for rock radio made it perfect for MTV, and it’s fitting the New Wave kids were the ones who took “Atlantic City” to heart, especially considering how Springsteen was inspired by the avant-garde electro of Suicide and “Frankie Teardrop.”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 ofin the Eighties, including by Springsteen himself, framed it as the dark side of Reagan’s America. By the end of 1982, unemployment was, the highest since the Depression. Springsteen had already written a hit protest song about it, “Out of Work,” for Sixties rocker Gary U.S. Bonds, which went Top 40 that summer, with a third verse aimed right at “Hey Mr. President,” taunting, “Maybe you got a job for me just driving you around?” Then as now, the president did not care. As Reagan asked in March 1982, “Is it news that some fellow out in South Succotash someplace has just been laid off, that he should be interviewed nationwide?” But was about that American isolation: what happens to people when they’re 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.”at the time, just as nobody admits booing Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, as in the year’s other big rock biopic,people wanted, the guy who was already an affectionate caricature all through pop culture, as in Robin Williams doing hisThe Burial of Black Genius That’s why this album opened the door for all the Eighties bar-band faux-Bruce clones. Hell, Hollywood was in the middle of makingBut then as now, people cherished the underdog aspect of the album — 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’s why the album has gone down in history, the ultimate case of a superstar ripping it up to start again, in the mode ofIn 2007, when it was time for Kelly Clarkson to follow up “Since U Been Gone,” she pissed off her label with the deeply personal'When Women Thrive, the Community Thrives': Inside Variety's Power of Women Event Featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, Sydney Sweeney, Kate Hudson, Nicole Scherzinger and Wanda Sykes 'Dancing With the Stars’ Crowns Dance Marathon Winner as One Contestant Suffers an Injury on Halloween Night: See the Scores, Who Went Home1 hour ago
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
The last stop in a literary Grand Tour portrays Pluto the way it really isNASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto has forced astronomers to rewrite their textbooks — but that’s not all: In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, space scientist Les Johnson explains how New Horizons forced him to rewrite
Read more »
Full List of Republicans Sponsoring SNAP Funding Bill as Benefits Run OutIf Congress does not take action, SNAP benefits will stop on November 1.
Read more »
What to Watch If You Hate Halloween, Like MeEverything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
Read more »
Strategist Readers Can’t Stop Buying Magnesium SprayIn October 2025, Strategist readers bought sleep spray, AirPods, Weejuns loafers, Rao’s pasta sauce, and more.
Read more »
Louisiana Republican says food stamp recipients without food should stop smoking crackA Louisiana Republican congressman said Thursday that people who are receiving food stamps and don’t have enough food should stop smoking crack.
Read more »
IBX Stop by Stop: Light rail to bring new opportunities to Southeast Brooklyn and with Linden Blvd. stopMany Canarsie, East New York and nearby residents are looking forward to enhanced transit as an IBX stop is proposed at Linden Blvd.
Read more »