After spend the most fervent years of my Bruce Springsteen fandom feeling, admiringly so, that New Jersey’s favorite son was an exacting creator who was stingy about sharing his cast-offs and false starts, it’s fascinating to watch him spend his septuagenarian years going into his vault or misfit recordings and making like Spanky in that meme where he tosses money out of the window. Springsteen has always been keenly aware of legacy, and he’s by now watched plenty of artists whose ephemera was collected and dispatched in haphazard, thoughtless ways after their passing. It makes sense that our most determined rock icon would make a preemptive effort to ensure that his hidden creative history was shared in the manner he preferred.

It especially makes sense that Springsteen is thoughtful and protective about Nebraska. The 1982 album is a true outlier in Springsteen’s discography, even as he has tried on occasion to replicate its stark power. With a pending Springsteen biopic that puts at least part of its focus on the recording of Nebraska, the time is clearly right for the album to get the full Columbia Legacy treatment. To accompany the announcement of the big, pricey package, Springsteen is releasing a track that he knows is bound to get a whole lot of attention: “Born in the U.S.A.” It’s well-established that the song that served as the powerhouse title cut on Springsteen’s 1984 blockbuster album of the same name was recorded in spare, acoustic form alongside other Nebraska material but didn’t make the cut. That version has made the rounds for some time, and it’s haunting. Springsteen also took a pass at the song with his electric guitar and bassist Garry Tallent and drummer Max Weinberg, longtime E Street Band members, in support. Supposedly, that take was thought be lost until Springsteen stumbled upon it recently.

Although I can enthuse over Springsteen’s albums with the best of them, I’ve also occasionally lamented his preference for a heavier production hand most of the time. This “Born in the U.S.A.” is a fascinating, enthralling hint as to the alternate approach I longed to hear. It sounds lean and hollowed out. It comes across as genuinely angry in a way the hit version doesn’t, which probably contributed to why that hit version was often misinterpreted as blindly patriotic. Nebraska is a classic the way it is, and so is Born in the U.S.A. Even so, I wouldn’t have minded if Springsteen had listened to this back in the day and decided, This is what I’d like to sound like for a while.

Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition is scheduled for release in October.