Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen replaced the E Street Band with one acoustic guitar on this gripping album that explores the rot and confusion in heartland America. Born In the USA sold more copies, but two decades later it's Nebraska that remains both timeless and sadly timely.

After ten years of forging his own brand of fiery, expansive rock & roll, Bruce Springsteen
has decided that some stories are best told by one man, one guitar. Flying in the face of a
sagging record industry with an intensely personal project that could easily alienate radio,
rock's gutsiest mainstream performer has dramatically reclaimed his right to make the
records he wants to make, and damn the consequences. This is the bravest of S... More >

Literary worth is established with the title tune, in which Springsteen's Charlie Starkweather becomes the first mass murderer in the history of socially relevant singer-songwriting to entertain a revealing thought--wants his pretty baby to sit in his lap when he gets the chair. Good thing he didn't turn that one into a rousing rocker, wouldn't you say, though (Hüsker Dü please note) I grant that some hardcore atonality might also produce the appropriate alienation effect. But the music is a problem here--unlike, er, Dylan, or Robert Johnson, or Johnny Shines or Si Kahn or Kevin Coyne, Springsteen isn't imaginative enough vocally or melodically to enrich these bitter tales of late capitalism with nothing but a guitar, a harmonica, and a few brave arrangements. Still, this is a conceptual coup, especially since it's selling. What better way to set right the misleading premise that rock and roll equals liberation? (Grade - A-)