Bruce Springsteen officially launched his career in 1973 when he released Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. This debut was accepted positively, and worked to put Springsteen on everyone’s radar. He was daring and verbose, critics said. Quick with a turn of phrase but not pretentious, reveling in being a showoff but not a braggart.
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Commercially, sales and chart placements were average. Artistically, the album served as Springsteen’s coming-out party, his debutante ball, if you will. It was an introduction to Springsteen’s musical artistry, but also a look into his psyche as a young man from small town New Jersey.
Springsteen’s songs are often rooted in narrative and characters, but many of them are still deeply personal. Born to Run from 1975 continued the trend of writing character-driven songs touching on personal experiences. Many of those experiences involved living in a small town.
The title track of Born to Run, for example, addresses the need to escape a dead-end town, but ultimately being unable to do so. The speaker laments, “this town rips the bones from your back / It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap,” but at the end he and Wendy are still stuck there.
This is clear in some of the final lines, “Oh, someday, girl, I don’t know when / We’re gonna get to that place / Where we really wanna go and we’ll walk in the sun.”
By the 1980s, Bruce Springsteen’s Writing Had Evolved Beyond Wishful Thinking and Dead-End Towns
Nebraska is the album that stands out as a turning point for Bruce Springsteen’s writing. Surprisingly, the stripped down, demo-quality recordings paired with a change in Springsteen’s lyrics makes this one of his best offerings.
There were several inspirations that led to this thematic change. Most notably, Springsteen read Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, which inspired songs about his childhood. Additionally, there are images presented through the lens of ordinary, blue collar individuals. These are characters created beyond the early incarnations of teenage woes.
With Nebraska, Springsteen presented a look at people hoping for deliverance, for something better that never seems to come. While he had previously created similar narratives, there was more youthful hope in those early records. Nebraska was darker and rougher both lyrically and in terms of its production.
Springsteen explained his intentions for Nebraska in the 2003 book Bruce Springsteen: Songs. According to the book, he wanted these songs to feel like peeks into the psyches of his characters.
“If there’s a theme that runs through the record, it’s the thin line between stability and that moment when time stops and everything goes to black,” he explained. “When the things that connect you to your world–your job, your family, friends, your faith, the love and grace in your heart–fail you.”
Featured Image by Ebet Roberts/Redferns
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