10 Perfect Albums That Have Awful Production

10. Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen

The music of Springsteen has always been made for the outsiders of rock and roll. Songs like Born to Run were always written about the underdogs, sitting in their dead end jobs and hoping to find something a little bit better past the horizon of their little town. There's a lot of heartache that comes with getting there though, and Nebraska is the sound of Springsteen at his wit's end.

After Darkness on the Edge of Town, the Boss had been fairly fried from the pat few years of dealing with fame and wanted to get some of his darker thoughts down on tape before going into the studio. Though this album does have Bruce's stamp of approval, this was the first record of his recorded without the E Street Band, being a glorified version of the cassette tape that he used to make these songs in his bedroom. When you listen to the tales laced throughout these songs though, they almost need this kind of spare production, like the kid who looks to get away from it all on Atlantic City or never getting closure from his old man on My Father's House.

There's definitely lot of heartache on display here, but that doesn't mean that all hope is lost on an album like this either. The production might definitely be a little bit hard to listen to, but not everything in life is sugarcoated, and sometimes you need albums like this to appreciate something like Born in the USA after the fact.