Bruce Springsteen在《The River》的轰动之后，推出了这张回归民谣风格的专辑。专辑的配器极其“简单”，吉他和口琴几乎就完全构成了歌曲的铺垫，这种Bob Dylan式的民谣在当时已经很难引起轰动，Bruce也没有对它进行特别的宣传炒作，因此它在专辑榜上最高也只排到第三，销量也马马虎虎，至今只有百万。然而，如果用心去听，可以感受到这是一张很有乡土感和现实感的专辑，很朴实，也很恳切，非常耐听。因此，尽管商业上并不成功，仍然有许多人认为这是 Bruce生涯中最优秀的专辑之一，甚至在美国流行音乐史上也是值得记录的杰作。 这张专辑在滚石杂志选出的500张历代最强专辑中排名第224位。 There is an adage in the record business that a recording artist's demos of new songs often come off better than the more polished versions later worked up in a studio. But Bruce Springsteen was the first person to act on that theory, when he opted to release the demo versions of his latest songs, recorded with only acoustic or electric guitar, harmonica, and vocals, as his sixth album, Nebraska. It was really the content that dictated the approach, however. Nebraska's ten songs marked a departure for Springsteen, even as they took him farther down a road he had been traveling previously. Gradually, his songs had become darker and more pessimistic, and those on Nebraska marked a new low. They also found him branching out into better developed stories. The title track was a first-person account of the killing spree of mass murderer Charlie Starkweather. (It can't have been coincidental that the same story was told in director Terrence Malick's 1973 film Badlands, also used as a Springsteen song title.) That song set the tone for a series of portraits of small-time criminals, desperate people, and those who loved them. Just as the recordings were unpolished, the songs themselves didn't seem quite finished; sometimes the same line turned up in two songs. But that only served to unify the album. Within the difficult times, however, there was hope, especially as the album went on. "Open All Night" was a Chuck Berry-style rocker, and the album closed with "Reason to Believe," a song whose hard-luck verses were belied by the chorus -- even if the singer couldn't understand what it was, "people find some reason to believe." Still, Nebraska was one of the most challenging albums ever released by a major star on a major record label.