Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen, the Long Branch kid born in 1949, wrote from the start like someone who looked at the back streets of home and heard an opera. His first two albums for Columbia, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, both came out in 1973, and both were stuffed with more words, more characters and more street-corner poetry than any sane record should hold. Behind him stood the E Street Band, his crew since 1972, a band with a symphony in its head.

Born to Run in 1975 was the one that blew the doors off and made him famous around the world. It is a huge, dense, booming record that sounds hungry from the first note to the last. The title track charges like it has somewhere to be, "Thunder Road" builds from a hush to a gallop, "Backstreets" aches, and "Jungleland" is a street epic that sprawls on and on and earns every minute.

The records that followed got leaner and tougher. Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978 swapped the romance for grit, with "Badlands" as its fist in the air. The River in 1980 became his first album to top the Billboard chart, and its title song is quiet and rueful. Nebraska in 1982 was a solo acoustic record, stark and haunted, with "Atlantic City" among its bleakest moments. Then he brought the E Street Band back for Born in the U.S.A. in 1984, his most successful album, with "Dancing in the Dark", "Glory Days" and a booming title track. For Tunnel of Love in 1987 he worked mostly with session players.

They call him the Boss, and the honors have piled up: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1994, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, MusiCares Person of the Year in 2013 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.