I say “probably” because there were no notes provided or context given. Two minutes and sixteen seconds of a half-formed thought that was probably recorded in the corner of Springsteen’s Telegraph Hill bedroom.
With 2020’s introduction of Letter to You, along with a newly released song on the Blinded by the Light soundtrack, this leaves us with an updated total of 340 officially released Bruce Springsteen songs to discuss. Where multiple versions of a song exist, they’re addressed within the same listing when relevant. That includes Tracks, The Promise, and The Ties That Bind box sets, but excludes all covers (even those strongly associated with Springsteen, as well as The Seeger Sessions.) The pre-record contract demos on Chapter & Verse and the CD accompanying Springsteen’s biography Born to Run also fall outside the purview of this list. The ground rules: This list consists of all original, officially released Bruce Springsteen compositions, whether an official album track or an outtake. With that in mind, all of the commercially available material was given equal consideration, whether catalogue classic, outtake, or recently released composition. Wrestling the entirety of his catalogue into a rank is a monumental task - this is a man who readily admits he has sometimes worked hardest on songs that didn’t make his records.
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(In the recent Letter to You documentary on Apple TV+, there’s a scene where Bruce toasts his band and declares, “We’re taking this thing till we’re all in a box.” It is my absolute delight to remain in service to update this list for the duration.) So, once again, the new material from that record (along with the release of a song on a film soundtrack) has been incorporated into the list. At that time, Bruce was already promising that we’d see a new E Street Band album soon, and the Boss has delivered with 2020’s Letter to You. This list was published for the first time in 2016 and was revisited in 2019 for the addition of Western Stars. He’s referred to the record’s “grab-bag” nature in the past, but there’s more thematic unity than appears on first glance, and the record still holds true to many of his core motifs: loyalty, faith, and songs that will get people dancing. , 1984’s million-selling, seven top-ten-hits album that turned Springsteen into an international superstar. Then, of course, there’s Born in the U.S.A. On those records, the characters were yearning for escape, looking for a way out, trying to make sense of their lives. Yet just two years later, when he produced 1975’s Born to Run - and later, 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town - Springsteen knew who and what he wanted to write about.
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While on tour in 2015, Springsteen would describe his first four albums as “outsider records.” Greetings From Asbury Park and The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, from 1973, were full of tales of Jersey Shore legends and had strong moments, but were musically and lyrically unfocused, the work of a young songwriter trying to find his voice. Just as important, he’s exalted the “the majesty, the mystery, the ministry - of rock and roll!” as he used to declare onstage, capturing the heat and joy of a busy dance floor on a Saturday night, and his wholehearted belief in rock music as nothing less than a genuine force of liberation. He has explored the dark side of the American dream, broken promises, and the possibilities of salvation and redemption. The themes and characters he established on that song formed the basis of his work and persona, and for the past 43 years he’s continued to write about love, faith, hope, struggle, meaning, and identity.
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That’s when he finally figured out how to combine the crackle and power of the epic songs he wrote with the skill of compression, distilling the energy into a brisk 4:31 without losing impact.įiguring out how to make “Born to Run” work affected Springsteen’s songwriting process not only for the rest of the album of the same name, but for the rest of his career. It took Springsteen six months to turn that phrase, “Born to Run,” into a song, and it was a watershed moment for his work: the first time he wrote a song with the studio in mind rather than how it would sound onstage. In 1974, a random phrase popped into Bruce Springsteen’s head as he was writing, one that seemed to match the music he was hearing in his mind. This article was originally published in 2016 and has been updated to reflect Springsteen’s latest work, now including 2020’s Letter to You.
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