Plus he had gotten rid of that scraggly beard by the time Darkness had come out, cut back on the Spectorian arrangements, and had gotten through a huge legal go-round with his manager. Darkness did OK, but I’m sure the label was leaning on him to do better; they could also have been worried that the The River, being a double album, would be a hard sell, so a single would have to be heavily pushed. Having won some artistic freedom with the sucess of all that, he followed up with Nebraska, a stark, dark, brooding solo album recorded on a cassette four-track. It could have been a career killer for anyone else, but his following was strong enough. CBS still had to make something big with the next one, and yes, with the help of MTV, it went huge, but at a cost. That “Dancing In The Dark” video, with him pulling a pre-Friends Courteney Cox out of the audience was pure cheese, and while he gained a larger, more generic audience, many old fans fell by the wayside.