Bruce Springsteen Box Set Gives Earliest Work New Immediacy — And Respect

Nebraska (released Sept. 20, 1982)
This time, Bruce made sure we would listen. “I wanted to let the listener hear the characters think, to get inside their heads, so you could hear and feel their thoughts, their choices,” he wrote in Songs. Stripped to their essence, these bedroom-recorded demo versions carry more intimacy than any of his previous work. And they don’t just examine the desperate actions of the disenfranchised criminals, losers and struggling laborers he’d visited so often before, they examine the roots of that desperation. On Nebraska, Springsteen expresses his deepening social conscience, though he filters it through the lens of personal experience; not until his next album would he start to consider taking a stand.

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Referencing the films True Confessions and Badlands, Terrence Malick’s depiction of the Starkweather murder spree that inspired the title song (and the name of another), he wrote, “There was a stillness on the surface of those pictures, while underneath lay a world of moral ambiguity and violence.” Though “Atlantic City,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Johnny 99,” “State Trooper” and “Reason to Believe” might be more recognized, once again, it’s the harrowing centerpiece, “Highway Patrolman,” that does you in with its bulls-eye depiction of that world.

Born in the U.S.A. (released June 4, 1984)

If Nebraska was Bruce’s somber coming-of-age, Born in the U.S.A. threw dirt on the man-child’s grave. These characters are broken, if not crushed, by circumstance, grief, resignation, their own stupidity or the world’s indifference. The sexual passion permeating these songs isn’t the teenage joy of discovery. It’s the grown-up longing of “I’m On Fire” and “Dancing in the Dark,” a plea for womblike protection in “Cover Me” and the frustration of fading attraction in “I’m Goin’ Down.” And in “Working on the Highway” and “Darlington County,” it has consequences.

Once again, melodies and tempos sometimes belie the weight of his lyrics. The title song became the most classic example of Springsteen’s music overwhelming his message; “Glory Days” is another. But even the near-marching rhythm of “Born in the U.S.A.’s” defiant chorus can’t completely distract from the couplet that captures not only the song’s theme, but the album’s—and so much of his canon:

You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up.

If Born in the U.S.A. tells us anything, it’s that escaping doesn’t work. And yet … and yet. 

We made a promise we swore we’d
always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender.

Regardless if whether it’s measured on a pop-stardom scale (seven top-10 hits) or an artistic one (his first Grammy), Born stands as a document that envelopes American culture—both its harrowing failures and hanging-by-fingernails faith—with singular skill.

And it still rocks. Just like its creator.

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