1982 saw the true birth of the new romantic era in music, MTV had been on the air for merely four months since September 1981 and the world of popular music was changing as promotional videos became the new vanguard for artists to share new material with their adoring public - while this saw Adam Ant, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet rule the airwaves with the second British takeover of American radio. We were still a year away from the behemoth that Thriller would become under Michael Jackson, and two years away from the glorious unveiling of Prince's Purple Rain, even two years away from the debut of Madonna.
Another zeitgeist shifting artist of the 1980s and more especially the glorious year of 1984 was Bruce Springsteen who had burst onto the scene as the future of rock n roll in 1975 with the Born to Run album and had become a prolific live act with the E Street Band. He had only just released 'The River' in 1981 which featured his first Top 10 single 'Hungry Heart' which itself benefitted from a pop music video following the birth of MTV in September of the same year.
The sky was the limit for The Boss, and yet the following year he decided to take a left turn into parts unknown and go back to basics and show the powers of his songwriting capabilities in a stripped back manner. This came to fruition with the album Nebraska, a ten track album that would become a masterpiece of storytelling as an artist laying bear his inner workings.
His sixth studio album, is essentially a solo album without the able support of his band, and in stark contrast to the exuberant joy of youth as seen in previous works. This was an album about outsiders, loners and outcasts, full of darkness and sombre melodies and lyrics.
From the opening title track, which tells the story of killer Charles Starkweather, this is not an album for the happy-go-lucky Springsteen fan; the tales he weaves are about those who are at the edges of society.
It was certainly a departure from the norm for Springsteen, and the mixed reception of the album commercially spoke volumes as he returned with the globally-dominant, bombastic 'Born in the USA' in 1984. However, there is many a trope of Springsteen's oeuvre running throughout - the one man on his own, that seeking for connection amidst the darkness and the sense of fear in what is ahead in the unknown.
From the demo sessions, the basis of 'Born in the USA' was created, a track that is actually less patriotic than people may recall. Throughout the album, it feels like Springsteen alone singing with his acoustic guitar married with the haunting harmonica on occasion as in 'Atlantic City'.
For diehards, this remains the pinnacle of Springsteen's writing material, such tracks as 'Highway Patrolman' and 'State Trooper' resonant and have lasted nearly 40 years. This also marked a chance for the Boss to proudly share his influences such as Chuck Berry on 'Open All Night' and Alan Vega on 'State Trooper'.
'Johnny 99' is a romping track, a distant echo from the late 1950s a la Ike Turner's Rocket 88 with harmonica and acoustic guitar clashing in the dark; a tale about a laid off worker, who after murdering someone asks for the death penalty instead of serving the 99 years of his sentence. A mythic tale wrapped in a folk legend, the eponymous man of song is motivated not by psychopathy but by his economic surroundings. At this moment a lot of American car industry plants were shutting down such as the Ford Motor Company based in Detroit, Michigan; was this really America as the working class man became secondary to saving money for the board?
For many it would be too risky a gamble to release a stripped back album so soon after your biggest selling album, yet for Springsteen this provided an opportunity to reset and compartmentalise his thoughts culminating in some of his most creative works incorporating the darkness of the soul with the light of day.
Surprisingly, some forty years of reflection, Nebraska perhaps speaks more clearly to the truth of the American dream than that of is successor would. Whilst 1984 there was a euphoria around the music, in Springsteen's masterpiece the sense of despair is all-pervading.
