Atlantic City

Bruce Springsteen made Nebraska alone in his bedroom on a four-track cassette recorder. The demos were supposed to be rough sketches, something for a full band to flesh out later.

Then the E Street Band tried to recreate them, and something got lost. The poverty of the sound was the sound. So Springsteen released the cassette recordings as the album, hiss and all.

“Atlantic City” is the centerpiece. A man whose luck has run out makes a deal with the mob. He’s going to do a job — he doesn’t say what — and then he and his girl are getting out. New life. Fresh start. The American dream, bought with blood money.

The song is about desperation, about the point where hope and crime become the same thing. The narrator knows he’s probably doomed. He makes the plan anyway. Standing still is worse than going down swinging.

Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty / And meet me tonight in Atlantic City.

Springsteen’s voice here is not the arena roar of “Born to Run.” It’s quieter, more scared, alone in the room with the one acoustic guitar and the constant tape hiss. It sounds like a confession recorded in a motel before the cops arrive.

Nebraska was a commercial risk, and “Atlantic City” is its hardest three minutes and fifty-seven seconds — American despair carried by just enough hope to break your heart.

The city’s dying. The man’s dying. Everything’s dying, baby, that’s a fact.

But maybe everything that dies someday comes back. He doesn’t know. He goes anyway.