In a way, this entire blog serves as an attempt to answer to the question: Why? Why do people commit murder, and why do we write, sing, and listen to songs about those murders? So far, we’ve spilled a lot – a lot! – of virtual ink trying to answer this question, which suggests that the answers are broad, deep, complex, and probably number in the millions.

But this week, with Springsteen’s help, we consider an answer that is by contrast singular, simple, and stark. Why? Because there’s just a meanness in this world. What more else is there to say?

Emphatically nothing.

This is the position of the narrator in Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” who tells us flatly and without fanfare about the first time he saw his girlfriend, the ride they took, the murder spree they went on, the fun they had, the price he paid for it, and his impending death by execution. He also tells us about his motive, or rather his lack thereof. His reasons are pretty much non-existent, just like he is himself about to become.

This guy is just riding the mean in this world simply because it’s there. Because it’s him. Because it’s just that way. As such there’s no transgression, no redemption, no explanation, and no further discussion to be had.

They declared me unfit to live,
Said into that great void my soul be hurled.
They wanted to know why I did what I did;
Well sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.

And as to why Springsteen wrote this song, well, same story: he just did. There is, as he explains in the introduction to this live version, no big other reason why:

“Nebraska,” Bruce Springsteen, live

The story was there for the taking, and Springsteen took it. The title song of his 1982 demo album of the same name, “Nebraska” is Springsteen’s version of the story of an actual murderer named Charlie Starkweather. In 1958, in Lincoln, Nebraska, Starkweather killed a service station clerk during a botched robbery/kidnapping and then went on a week-long rampage, first murdering his girlfriend’s family (father, mother, and baby sister) and then, on the run and with his girlfriend willingly at his side, he brutally murdered seven other people. Starkweather was 19 going on 20. His girlfriend was 14 going on 15.

During the week the couple holed up in Fugate’s house (with the bodies of her family buried in the back) and in the Nebraska fields, and then they hit the road, traveling on the interstate. On the run, the couple was hunted across Nebraska and Wyoming by over 1,000 police and national guardsmen. Eventually their car stalled, hampering their escape, and they were captured.

Their story was sensational for an obvious host of reasons: the nature of the crimes, the nature of their relationship and, yes, the nature of their attitude and also their appearance – Fugate was so very young and pretty and Starkweather consciously styled himself to look like James Dean, appearing in newspaper photos with a sneer on his face, a cigarette in his mouth, and a slicked pompadour.

Most sensational of all, however, was Starkweather’s defense. He didn’t have one. In fact, he was defiant, stating as part of his formal confession: “They say this is a wonderful world to live in, but I don’t believe I ever did really live in a wonderful world…The more I looked at people, the more I hated them.”

Me and her went for a ride, sir, and ten innocent people died.
From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska,
with a sawed-off .410 on my lap.

Through to the badlands of Wyoming, I killed everything in my path.
I can’t say that I am sorry
for the things that we done.
At least for a little while, sir, me and her
we had us some fun.

Fugate was charged with first degree murder, convicted, and sentenced to life (she was released on parole in 1976 after her sentence was commuted). Starkweather was charged with first degree murder, convicted, and sentenced to death by electric chair. He was executed on June 25, 1959 at the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

The jury brought in a guilty verdict
and the judge, he sentenced me to death.
Midnight in a prison storeroom,
leather straps across my chest.

Sheriff when the man pulls that switch, sir, and snaps my forehead back.
You make sure my pretty baby,
is sittin right there on my lap.

Starkweather’s story and his confession are sensational, extreme and startling, and Springsteen captures all that in “Nebraska” through his lyrics. But through his delivery and arrangement, Springsteen also captures the horrifying opposite that was also inherent to Starkweather and his confession: his cold, empty and utter flatness.

There’s just a meanness in this world. And beyond this world, nothing – just that great void into which a man’s soul is hurled.

Depressing? There’s more. Next up this week: some musings on how “Nebraska” is a bit of a misfit alongside the rest of Springsteen’s work (including the other songs on the album Nebraska); how Terrence Malick, Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, and a grandmother-killing bad man in rural Georgia helped shaped Springsteen’s song; and how the song tells us something about the American heartland – or simply refuses to tell us.

For now, the lovely (too lovely?) cover by Chrissy Hynde and Adam Seymour from the stellar tribute album Badlands – A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (2000).

And the also beautiful (too beautiful?) version by Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou:

Too beautiful, yes. With its harmonizing and earnest communion, this version is too much. As a duet, it becomes a type of contorted love song, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. As we’ll continue to see this week, “Nebraska” is nothing if not a story about the stories we tell each other about people who clash, stand alone, estrange and, yes, who hate. About people who, as we’ll be further told, just simply ain’t no good.

— Shaleane Gee