Nebraska: Bruce Springsteen’s Traditional Singer-Songwriter Neoclassical Pivot

This article seeks to explore and enrich the reader/listener’s comprehension of Nebraska as the moment Bruce Springsteen embodies the singer-songwriter he was originally signed to be, while simultaneously going beyond it—but with an unexpected difference. In Nebraska Springsteen recognizes a process whereby he can make and remake “legitimate” public acoustic versions of his bigger E Street Band arrangements that appear to redefine “era,” establishing a more or less invisible “prehistoric” neoclassical acoustic strata threading through his entire output—the complete acoustic songs and versions as a collection. As such, he becomes an imaginary new kind of American artist, one who writes songs both in and from the acoustic Dust Bowl era of the 1930s and in full-band (E Street) contemporary arrangements. In short, all his songs can now live a double life as both “historic” and “present.”