Popular music · Rock
born 23 September 1949 · American
Heartland rock; the New Jersey shore sound
Bruce Springsteen, 'the Boss', emerged from the New Jersey shore bar circuit in the early 1970s writing long, crowded songs about cars, work and escape. Born to Run made him a star in 1975 and Born in the U.S.A. made him a global one in 1984, while the stark cassette-recorded Nebraska showed the other side of the same country. With the E Street Band he built a reputation for three- and four-hour concerts that has outlasted almost everyone.
A 1975 sleeve of a man in a leather jacket leaning on a black saxophonist, the image running across the gatefold (1975)
Born to Run — the photograph by Eric Meola; the saxophonist is Clarence Clemons. Its release put him on the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week.
A 1982 album of bleak murder ballads taped on a four-track cassette machine in a rented New Jersey bedroom (1982)
Nebraska — the demo was released as the record; the title song is about the spree killer Charles Starkweather.
A 1984 album whose sleeve of denim and a red baseball cap against the Stars and Stripes led politicians to mistake its title track for a flag-waver (1984)
Born in the U.S.A. — the song is about a Vietnam veteran; the sleeve is by Annie Leibovitz. Seven of its twelve tracks were US top ten singles.
A 1984 single whose video ends with the singer pulling a young Courteney Cox out of the crowd to dance (1984)
'Dancing in the Dark', directed by Brian De Palma; his highest-charting US single, at number two.
A 1993 song for a film about a lawyer with AIDS, which won its author an Academy Award (1993)
'Streets of Philadelphia', from Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia; it also won four Grammys.
A 2002 album responding to the September 11 attacks, his first studio record with the full band in eighteen years (2002)
The Rising, produced by Brendan O'Brien.
A 1973 song about a girl and a carnival on the Jersey shore, later a British number one for Manfred Mann's Earth Band (1973)
'Blinded by the Light', from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.; the cover version reworked the lyric into its famous misheard line.
A 1980 double album of twenty songs, closing with a driver who passes the scene of a fatal crash and cannot sleep (1980)
The River — his first US number one album, containing 'Hungry Heart', his first top ten single.