The Boss flicks the switch on the time machine, taking us back to a moment when E.T. was flying high at the box office, Michael Jackson’s Thriller was hot, and Ronald Reagan had the top job.
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At the stroke of midnight, Bruce Springsteen shared Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition (via Sony Music), a treasure chest stuffed with previously unseen and unheard cuts. It’s the stuff of fans’ dreams.
Released both digitally and as a five-disc box set, Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition gathers solo outtakes from back in the day, and the fabled “Electric Nebraska” sessions; a newly-shot performance film of Nebraska in its entirety; a recently-released version of “Born in the U.S.A.”, recorded back in April 1982 with Springsteen backed by Max Weinberg and Garry Tallent; plus a 2025 remaster of the original album.
“We threw out the keyboards and played basically as a three-piece,” Springsteen reflects of the unearthed “Born in the U.S.A.” cut, a song penned during the Nebraska era. “It was kinda like punk rockabilly. We were trying to bring ‘Nebraska’ into the electric world.”
In a separate promo video accompanying the release, Springsteen admits he’s often asked about “Electric Nebraska,” which features Tallent, Weinberg, Danny Federici, Roy Bittan and Stevie Van Zandt. “There is no ‘Electric Nebraska’. It doesn’t exist,” he says, thinking out loud.
Wrong.
He checked, revisited the vault. “There it was,” he remarks. “And radically different than anything I’d remembered.”
The album was pushed back a week to coincide with the cinematic rollout of Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Directed by Scott Cooper and released through 20th Century Studios, the biopic chronicles the making of Springsteen’s Nebraska, and served as the opening film at AFI Fest in Hollywood on Wednesday.
Springsteen was on hand for a brief performance inside the TCL Chinese Theater after the screening, according to The Hollywood Reporter, where he thanked guests for “supporting our movie” and quipped “this is my last night in the movie business, I’m sticking to music.”
The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame-inducted artist used the opportunity speak out once more against Donald Trump, offering up a “prayer” for “no kings” in his speech. “I’ve spent 50 years traveling as kind of a musical ambassador for America and I’ve seen firsthand all the love and admiration that folks around the world have had for the America of our highest ideals. Despite how terribly damaging America has been recently, that country and those ideals remain worth fighting for. I want to send this out as a prayer for America, for our unity. No kings,” he remarked, before hitting a rendition of “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
Jeremy Allen White stars as Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere, which is in cinemas from today. Stream Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition below.
