How Did Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ Fare on the Charts & at the Grammys When It Was Released in 1982?

Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 blockbuster The River was a hard act to follow. The double-disc album was Springsteen’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, logging four consecutive weeks in the top spot. Moreover, it brought Springsteen his first top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 (“Hungry Heart”) and his second Grammy nomination (best rock vocal performance, male, for the entire album, though he lost to Rick Springfield’s smash single, “Jessie’s Girl”).

Nebraska, released on Sept. 30, 1982, through Columbia Records, was Springsteen’s sixth studio album. He recorded the songs unaccompanied on a four-track recorder in the bedroom of his home in Colts Neck, N.J. The album is seen as one of the first DIY home recordings by a major artist.

In recording a follow-up to The River, Springsteen made the brave decision to follow his heart and not compete in the pop arena he had just proved he could conquer. That career crossroads moment is dramatized in the upcoming film Deliver Me From Nowhere, in which Jeremy Allen White plays the legendary rocker.

Nebraska entered the Billboard 200 at No. 29 in the issue dated Oct. 9, 1982, a marked drop from The River, which had debuted at No. 4 in the issue dated Nov. 1, 1980.

The following week, Nebraska leaped to No. 4, becoming Springsteen’s fourth consecutive studio album to make the top 10 within two weeks. But after taking that 25-position leap to No. 4, Nebraska would climb just one more notch. The album peaked at No. 3 for four weeks in October/November 1982, behind John Cougar Mellencamp‘s American Fool and Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage the first two weeks and then Men at Work’s Business as Usual and Mirage the next two weeks.

Nebraska logged 29 weeks on the Billboard 200, a big drop from The River, which held on for 107 weeks.

No singles were released from Nebraska in the U.S., though Springsteen did create his first music video of the MTV era for one of the tracks, “Atlantic City.”

The album received no Grammy nominations. The latter wasn’t really a surprise: Born to Run and Darkness had also been shut out in the Grammy nods. Grammy voters were cool to Springsteen in his first decade. (It was nothing personal: They were resistant to rock artists in general at the time.) Springsteen has since become Grammy royalty, winning 20 Grammys between 1985 and 2010.

Nebraska has yet to be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame or the National Recording Registry. Springsteen has three recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame: His 1973 debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.; Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A. His only entry in the National Recording Registry, where very few artists have more than one title listed, is Born to Run. However, the album was well-received by critics at the time; it finished No. 3 in The Village Voice‘s crit-polling year-end Pazz & Jop listing.

Did Springsteen miss being at the center of the pop universe? Perhaps. His very next album, Born in the U.S.A., hit the pop bullseye, topping the Billboard 200 for seven nonconsecutive weeks, spawning seven top 10 singles on the Hot 100 and bringing Springsteen four Grammy nominations (over a two-year span), including his first win, best rock vocal performance, male for “Dancing in the Dark.”

True artists follow their own path, rather than fulfill others’ expectations of them, as Springsteen demonstrated in 1982.