Following the success of his tour for The River, Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) retreats to his New Jersey home studio with long-time manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong). He wrestles with the ghosts of his past as he labours over the songs that will become Nebraska, a stark, pared-back, and deeply personal set of largely acoustic tracks, at the same time that he was recording demos for the more bombastic Born in the USA, which would catapult him to global superstardom.