On the outside, 1980 was a peak time for Bruce Springsteen. He had launched to fame in the latter years of the prior decade with Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, becoming the new darling of America’s working man and representing a beacon of musical hope to the masses.

But on a personal level, perhaps because of the pressure to deliver and the realisation of having to dig to even deeper depths to mine sonic gold, ‘The Boss’ entered more of a transitional period with the dawn of the ’80s, causing him to rely on a much vaster array of musical influences as a result.

As much as Springsteen can well and truly deliver an electrifying stadium rock anthem, he is also a master of nurturing a much more tender sonic psyche through his own introspection, which became the crux of his follow-up album, The River, which was released in 1980. Boasting lifetime hits such as ‘Hungry Heart’ and ‘Fade Away’, it was a record that prompted Springsteen to truly look at himself in the position of his life and pen it into a soundtrack, creating a body of work that was all at once both transcendental and deeply recognisable.

Across the wide-ranging scores of a double album holding 20 tracks, it was the closing tune, ‘Wreck on the Highway’, that stood out to many as a seminal Springsteen ode, unlike any other effort heard within the walls of his back catalogue before. Having taken the rest of The River through a ponderous exploration of life and all the trials and tribulations it brings, in many ways it was only right that the singer should end the magnum opus record by staring down the barrel of death.

However, rather than reflecting on grief experienced in his own life, as might have been expected for a man who was only still in the early part of his 30s at the time, Springsteen decided to change track and examine the concept of his own mortality when it came to ‘Wreck on the Highway’, using a forgotten country yarn to push his sonic imagination into a much darker world.

Indeed, although the basis of the song’s lyrics were hugely introspective in the way the narrator comes across a car crash and thus begins to reflect on the nature of his own eventual passing, the title itself was lifted from a little-known country tune of the same name, written by Dorsey Dixon and released in 1942 by Roy Acuff. As much as Springsteen was a bona fide rock star, the influence he took from the original song demonstrated that his true heart lay in a much more tender place, allowing him to expose the real man behind ‘The Boss’ mask.

Rousing tunes like ‘Born to Run’ or ‘Dancing in the Dark’ were all well and good in allowing him to fill stadiums time and time again for decades to come, but it’s arguably far more niche efforts like ‘Wreck on the Highway’ where his true soul hides, not often displayed for public consumption but when occasionally exposed, representing the genesis of who he is as a musician.

In turn, the track was not just the closer of the album, but the true lynchpin on which Springsteen’s sonic transition was held, as such personal songwriting gave him the confidence to explore what would come next on Nebraska. In certain respects, this was hardly surprising: ‘The Boss’ had created a career around giving voice to gritty realities, so it was high time that he laid bare some of his own.