Bruce Springsteen

American rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter

• Born: September 23, 1949
• Place of Birth: Long Branch, New Jersey

Immensely popular as a singer-songwriter and live performer, Springsteen demonstrated uncompromising artistic integrity, commitment to his craft, and belief in the redemptive, life-changing power of music.

MEMBER OF Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

The Life

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen was born into a working-class family, and he grew up in the factory town of Freehold, New Jersey, a blue-collar upbringing that stimulated his deep empathy for the tenacious underdogs who populate his lyrics. Uninterested in work or school, repressed at home, and alienated from most of his peers, Springsteen came alive when he began playing guitar at age sixteen. From that time, he dedicated himself obsessively to a career in music.

After leading a series of increasingly successful bands (earning the nickname the Boss for his demands for perfectionism) and developing into a prolific songwriter, Springsteen was signed to a recording contract in 1972 by John Hammond, the executive who a decade earlier had discovered Bob Dylan. He released his first two albums—Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ and The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle—to critical acclaim, but low sales. It was his third album, Born to Run (1975) that made Springsteen a rock star. Over the next decade, Springsteen and his E Street Band recorded one successful album after another and gained a reputation for their endless energy on stage. In 1984, the release of Born in the U.S.A. made Springsteen one of the biggest rock musicians working at the time. The album had seven singles reach the top of the Billboard charts.

Springsteen disbanded the E Street Band in 1989. His subsequent solo releases in the early nineties were commercially successful, though not in comparison to his previous releases, and did not win over critics. His career somewhat in a slump, he embarked on a solo acoustic tour. The E Street Band was reunited in 1999 for a tour accompanying the release of a greatest hits album.

In 2002, Springsteen recorded an album with the E Street Band, The Rising. The album was hailed as a return to form. After The Rising, (which discussed the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001), Springsteen became more open about his liberal politics in his music and performances. He gave performances in support of Democrat John Kerry's bid for the presidency in 2004, Barack Obama's successful campaigns in 2008 and 2012, and Hillary Clinton's 2016 run. Meanwhile, he continued to release successful rock and acoustic albums, supported with highly popular tours and appearances. He and the E Street Band also played the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIII in 2009.

Springsteen launched another element of his career when he made his Broadway debut in 2017. In a predominantly solo show, Springsteen on Broadway, he played music and performed spoken word pieces, including excerpts from his autobiography Born to Run (2016). The groundbreaking show was critically acclaimed and extremely popular and was extended from its original eight-week run through the end of 2018 while commanding record-setting ticket prices reaching into the thousands of dollars. It earned a special Tony Award and spawned a film version and soundtrack album, both of which also proved popular.

In 2023, Springsteen embarked on a 130-city tour across North America and Europe. However, Springsteen was forced to postpone twenty-nine shows in late 2023 as he recovered from a stomach ulcer. In 2024, Springsteen announced the release of an eighteen-song greatest hits album titled, Best of Bruce Springsteen.

In 1985, Springsteen married model and actress Julianne Phillips, and they divorced in 1990. In 1991, he married Patty Scialfa, who had been singing backup vocals with his E Street Band since 1984. They had three children: Evan James, Jessica Rae, and Sam Ryan.

The Music

Early Works. The connection with Hammond led to the media labeling Springsteen "the new Dylan." With few songs suitable for hit singles, his first two albums proved to be commercial disasters. However, some visionary critics, such as Steve Simels, who put the first album on his best-of-the-year list, were quick to see his talent. The influential critic Jon Landau, who became Springsteen's manager and producer, famously declared after seeing him play in 1974, "I saw rock and roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen." Time would justify that prediction, as several songs from those first releases became classic staples of his live shows decades later. Many critics would now rank the second record, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, among his best.

Born to Run. After two commercial failures, Springsteen set out to make the greatest rock-and-roll record of all time. He succeeded with Born to Run, combining a guitar-driven wall of sound with passionate vocals and lyrics that reimagined the classic rock-and-roll themes of cars, romance, and dreams as adult, rather than exclusively adolescent, concerns. Even without a hit single, the record sold a million copies in the first year and became a staple of FM radio programming. Springsteen was the first musician to appear on the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week.

Nebraska. At the peak of his popularity—The River was his first album to reach number one on the charts and yielded his first hit single—Springsteen astonished critics and fans with his next release, the solo acoustic Nebraska. Switching unexpectedly from electric to acoustic music, Springsteen produced in his listeners an intense response, similar to Dylan when he switched from acoustic to electric music in 1965. Recorded at Springsteen's home on a cassette deck, the album, with its primitive sound and bleak material (the title track is a study of a serial killer), showed the influences of country and folk music on his writing, and it revealed unsuspected depths of despair in Springsteen's generally optimistic mythology, whose protagonists were often downtrodden but seldom defeated like the isolated, psychically battered characters depicted in Nebraska.

Born in the U.S.A. Springsteen's seventh album was a great commercial success, producing seven Top 10 singles by combining the social realism of Nebraska with the epic rock-and-roll music of Born to Run. The opening song, "Born in the U.S.A.," was often misinterpreted as a commercial for America's superiority by listeners who ignored the lyrics (Ronald Reagan briefly used it as a theme song for his presidential campaign). Originally written for Nebraska, it was in fact a bitter reflection on the continuing human costs of the Vietnam War. As always, Springsteen's empathy for his characters transformed the political theme into a personal one, presenting it from the point of view of a disillusioned Vietnam veteran.

Magic. Springsteen's work continued to earn critical praise and popular success, with Magic (2007) debuting as the best-selling album in the world and earning unanimous critical acclaim and four Grammy Award nominations. Hailed as a return to his classic form and featuring the full E Street Band (most of whom had been playing with him, on and off, for thirty-plus years), the album successfully combined accessible pop tunes, hard-driving rock songs, and pointed political commentary. Just as his early work had explored the impact of the Vietnam War on the lives of average Americans, this album took the war in Iraq as its primary subtext.

Wrecking Ball. With his seventeenth studio album, Wrecking Ball (2012), Springsteen earned his tenth number one album in the US charts. The achievement matched that of music icon Elvis Presley as third only to artists Jay-Z and the Beatles. The album continued Springsteen's later-career revival, earning strong critical reception and three Grammy Award nominations.

High Hopes. His next album, High Hopes (2014), also shot to the top of the US charts. Featuring the E Street Band, as well as contributions from deceased E Street Band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, the album was named the second-best album of 2014 by Rolling Stone in the magazine's year-end list.

Western Stars. Springsteen's nineteenth album, a solo project titled Western Stars, was released in 2019. It was produced by Ron Aniello and featured the singles "Hello Sunshine," "There Goes My Miracle," "Tuscon Train," and "Western Stars." The music on the album was influenced by 1970s Southern California pop music and focuses on telling stories that are evocative of the American West.

Letter to You. Working again with his regular backing band, the E Street Band, Springsteen released Letter to You in 2020. It was preceded by the titular single and the single "Ghosts." Letter to You reached the second spot on the US Billboard 200, making Springsteen the first artist in history to have a top five album for six straight decades.

Only the Strong Survive. In November 2022, Springsteen released his twenty-first album, Only the Strong Survive, his second cover album. Lending itself as the album's title, Jerry Butler's "Only the Strong Survive" is among the songs covered. Others include "Nightshift" by the Commodores, "Turn Back the Hands of Time" by Tyrone Davis, and "When She was My Girl" by the Four Tops.

Musical Legacy

While many of the earlier giants of rock music had made their mark as innovators, Springsteen's trademark was his mastery of the traditional, as he worked to consolidate and extend what he saw as a valuable and distinctively American musical history. In an era when punk, new wave, and even disco were challenging the centrality of the rock tradition, Springsteen explored and revitalized the genre itself, a project that eventually took him beyond rock music into the folk and country traditions long ignored by most rock musicians. Springsteen's empathy for the problems and the everyday heroism of ordinary working people struggling to live meaningful lives in difficult times made his music important to his audience. The Beatles also achieved such levels of popular and critical success, but for just a few years, while Springsteen sustained it through multiple decades.

Springsteen's music has been recognized with numerous Grammy and Emmy Awards, and his song for the film Philadelphia, "Streets of Philadelphia," which adopts the point of view of a gay man dying of AIDS, won an Academy Award in 1994. Springsteen was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and the E Street Band was also inducted in 2014. He was given the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009. In 2016, Springsteen was one of the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, from President Barack Obama in acknowledgement of his contributions to American music and culture. In 2023, he received another grand honor, the National Medal of Arts, from President Biden for his contributions to the arts in the US. In the same year, New Jersey's governor declared September 23 Bruce Springsteen Day, though Springsteen missed the presentation of the honor after contracting COVID-19.

Principal Recordings

ALBUMS (solo): Nebraska, 1982; Human Touch, 1992; Lucky Town, 1992; The Ghost of Tom Joad, 1995; Devils and Dust, 2005; We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, 2006; Western Stars, 2019.

ALBUMS (with the E Street Band): Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey, 1973; The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, 1973; Born to Run, 1975; Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978; The River, 1980; Born in the U.S.A., 1984; Tunnel of Love, 1987; The Rising, 2002; Magic, 2007; Working on a Dream, 2009; Wrecking Ball, 2012; High Hopes, 2014; Letter to You, 2020; Only the Strong Survive, 2022.

Bibliography

Alterman, Eric. It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. Little Brown, 1999.

Graff, Gary, ed. The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. Visible Ink, 2005.

Harrison, Scoop. “Bruce Springsteen Announces New Greatest Hits Album." Consequence of Sound, 1 Mar. 2024, consequence.net/2024/03/bruce-springsteen-greatest-hits-album/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Lenker, Maureen Lee. "Bruce Springsteen reminds us why he's the Boss, becomes first artist with a top 5 album in six decades." Entertainment Weekly, 3 Nov. 2020, ew.com/music/bruce-springsteen-first-artist-top-5-album-six-decades. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Marsh, Dave. Bruce Springsteen: On Tour, 1968-2005. Bloomsbury, 2006.

Marsh, Dave. Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts. Routledge, 2014.

Rolling Stone, eds. Bruce Springsteen: The Rolling Stone Files. Hyperion, 1996.

Sawyers, June Skinner, ed. Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader. Penguin, 2004.

Taylor, David. "Bruce Springsteen Reinvents the Broadway Show as Run Comes to a Close." The Guardian, 7 Dec. 2018, www.theguardian.com/music/2018/dec/07/bruce-springsteen-on-broadway-show-new-york-close. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.