Latest news with #Beatles
France 24
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- France 24
Springsteen digs into the vault to rewrite his 'lost' '90s
It turns out "The Boss" never bought into that narrative, and now he's aiming to overturn it with a new collection of unreleased material, "Tracks II: The Lost Albums," released on Friday. "I often read about myself in the '90s as having some lost period," the 75-year-old rocker said in a 17-minute documentary released last week. "Actually, Patti and I were parenting very young children at the time, so that affected some of your workout," he conceded, referencing his wife and E Street Band member, Patti Scialfa. "But really, I was working the whole time." During the Covid pandemic, Springsteen returned to his archives and "finished everything I had in my vault." The result is a sprawling box set compilation of 83 songs organized thematically into seven albums, spanning his output from 1983 to 2018. But the greatest spotlight falls on the 1990s -- a decade long seen as a wilderness period for the New Jersey native, who was said to be struggling to find a solo identity during his hiatus from the E Street Band. Springsteen first burst onto the national scene in the '70s as a would-be heir to Bob Dylan, hit new commercial heights in the '80s with "Born in the USA," and delivered what many view as the definitive artistic response to the 9/11 attacks with "The Rising." One album in the box set revisits the "Streets of Philadelphia Sessions," evoking the namesake hit with a moody blend of synthesizers and pulsing drumbeats as he explores dark emotional terrain. "I'd made three albums about relationships, I had a fourth one," Springsteen said. "It was particularly dark, and I just didn't know if my audience was going to be able to hear it at that moment." Another record, "Somewhere North of Nashville," is a rollicking, country-rooted romp. A third, "Inyo," recorded in the late '90s along California's borderlands, is an ode to Mexican-American culture. Springsteen is far from the first major artist to unearth new material from songs that were originally shelved, following a tradition established by Dylan's "Bootleg Series" in 1991. "Tracks II," as the name suggests, is a sequel to 1998's "Tracks" -- and "Tracks III" is set to follow. Over the years, critics have often argued there's a reason some tracks remain unreleased -- with "new" Beatles songs based on the late John Lennon's homemade demos often cited as proof that not every vault needs to be reopened. So far, however, "Tracks II" has been received favorably by many reviewers. "For any fan, it's a revelation to hear the secret mischief that Bruce Springsteen was making in the shadows, during his most low-profile era -- the music he made for himself, after years of making music for the world," wrote Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. © 2025 AFP
New Straits Times
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New Straits Times
#Showbiz: Springsteen digs into the vault to rewrite his 'lost' '90s
WASHINGTON: Conventional wisdom among Bruce Springsteen fans holds that the 1990s were his "lost" decade – a period where he struggled to chart a new course after parting ways with his longtime collaborators, the E Street Band. It turns out "The Boss" never bought into that narrative, and now he's aiming to overturn it with a new collection of unreleased material, Tracks II: The Lost Albums, released on Friday. "I often read about myself in the '90s as having some lost period," the 75-year-old rocker said in a 17-minute documentary released last week. "Actually, Patti and I were parenting very young children at the time, so that affected some of your workout," he conceded, referencing his wife and E Street Band member, Patti Scialfa. "But really, I was working the whole time." During the Covid pandemic, Springsteen returned to his archives and "finished everything I had in my vault." The result is a sprawling box set compilation of 83 songs organised thematically into seven albums, spanning his output from 1983 to 2018. But the greatest spotlight falls on the 1990s – a decade long seen as a wilderness period for the New Jersey native, who was said to be struggling to find a solo identity during his hiatus from the E Street Band. Springsteen first burst onto the national scene in the '70s as a would-be heir to Bob Dylan, hit new commercial heights in the '80s with Born in the USA, and delivered what many view as the definitive artistic response to the 9/11 attacks with The Rising. One album in the box set revisits the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, evoking the namesake hit with a moody blend of synthesisers and pulsing drumbeats as he explores dark emotional terrain. "I'd made three albums about relationships, I had a fourth one," Springsteen said. "It was particularly dark, and I just didn't know if my audience was going to be able to hear it at that moment." Another record, Somewhere North of Nashville, is a rollicking, country-rooted romp. A third, Inyo, recorded in the late '90s along California's borderlands, is an ode to Mexican-American culture. Springsteen is far from the first major artist to unearth new material from songs that were originally shelved, following a tradition established by Dylan's Bootleg Series in 1991. Tracks II, as the name suggests, is a sequel to 1998's Tracks – and Tracks III is set to follow. Over the years, critics have often argued there's a reason some tracks remain unreleased – with "new" Beatles songs based on the late John Lennon's homemade demos often cited as proof that not every vault needs to be reopened. So far, however, Tracks II has been received favourably by many reviewers. "For any fan, it's a revelation to hear the secret mischief that Bruce Springsteen was making in the shadows, during his most low-profile era – the music he made for himself, after years of making music for the world," wrote Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone.
Forbes
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Contra John Lennon In 1980, The Chinese Are Eating. Let's Celebrate It
NEW YORK - CIRCA 1973: Former Beatle John Lennon poses for a photo circa 1973 in New York City, New ... More York. (Photo by) John Lennon recorded 'Nobody Told Me' on August 7, 1980. In the song he famously told listeners 'They're starving back in China so finish what you got.' It was recently reported that since the 1980s, 800 million Chinese have risen out of poverty. Stop and think about that, particularly in relation to Lennon's lyrics. While today there are 5,500 McDonald's in China, in 1980 there were none. The first China-based store opened in October of 1990. The Chinese are eating. While communism is the ideology of desperation, and per Lennon, starvation, its antithesis is the stuff of abundance. McDonald's everywhere you look abundance. Because China used to be communist, food used to be scarce. That food isn't scarce now tells us China is no longer communist. Really, what else could rising acquisitiveness (including a particular fondness for American plenty) signal? Unless the Chinese people are superhuman such that they're uniquely capable of overcoming collectivism, it must be said that collectivism long ago ceased to define the Chinese experience. This is a useful distinction to make as politicians and pundits in the U.S. continue to attack Chinese businesses for having the temerity to operate like – yes – profit-motivated American businesses. For the longest time Americans yearned for China to leave communism behind, only for the country to do just that. Evidence supporting the claim that China has tossed communism in the proverbial dustbin can be found in the growing number of businesses that have originated in China, only to expand globally. Think SHEIN, Temu, Baidu, Alibaba, MYbank, TikTok, and countless others not mentioned along with even more on the way. What we're seeing in China is proof of what we Americans have long believed: when people are free, they prosper. The previous truth is almost trite it's so simple, but true it is. The Chinese weren't formerly desperately poor and starving because they lacked talent or drive, but because an unnatural, anti-human ideology was foisted on them in cruel fashion. Thankfully once again China is no longer communist. No doubt its ruling political party is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but the name no longer fits the ideology. Though the CCP oversees China, it now oversees a market economy. Yes, the CCP is no longer communist. Things have changed because views do. Americans know this well. A Republican Party long associated with free trade and reverence for business increasingly embraces tariffs while attacking the best and brightest of U.S. commerce. The change in the Republican party not infrequently reveals itself in its support for the political harassment of businesses with Chinese origins that are prospering in the U.S. The explanation used for the persecution of Chinese businesses is their 'mandated allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party.' It's just a veiled excuse for protectionism, one that glosses over the happy fact that the Chinese Communist Party is no longer communist. See the 800 million who've escaped poverty since Lennon recorded 'Nobody Told Me.' Lennon's words have a dated quality to them precisely because the Chinese are eating. And they're eating because China is no longer communist. Let's celebrate this truth, rather than harassing and banning the businesses that confirm it.
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Bruce Springsteen's ‘Tracks II' is an epic act of rock-star lore
Fifty years after he became a sweat-soaked rock star with 1975's 'Born to Run,' Bruce Springsteen has opened up his vault of unreleased material for a new box set that spans nearly the length of the half-century he's spent chasing a runaway American dream. 'Tracks II: The Lost Albums' collects 83 songs, the vast majority of them unheard by even devoted fans of the Boss. It's a sequel of sorts to 1998's 'Tracks,' which offered up demos and outtakes to fill out the story of one of music's most prolific and meticulous songwriters. But unlike the earlier set, 'Tracks II' organizes its songs into seven distinct LPs, each with a different sound and theme; Springsteen says he came this close to releasing some of them at the time they were made but ultimately decided not to for various reasons related to his life and career. As a project of pop archiving, 'Tracks II's' breadth and depth put it on par with Peter Jackson's Beatles docuseries 'Get Back' and with Taylor Swift's series of 'Taylor's Version' re-recordings. And it arrives at a time when Springsteen, 75, is already in the headlines thanks to his war of words with President Trump over the latter's aggressive deportation policies and to the recently unveiled trailer for this fall's 'Deliver Me From Nowhere,' in which Jeremy Allen White plays Springsteen. Times pop music critic Mikael Wood and staff writer August Brown gathered to discuss the box set and what to make of its bounty. Mikael Wood: Let's start with how Springsteen and his team are rolling out this behemoth. As I've interpreted the essays and videos and interviews that have set up 'Tracks II,' they see the box set as an opportunity to reshape our understanding of the Boss in two ways. The first is that he was ambivalent about rock stardom: 'L.A. Garage Sessions '83' is the earliest of the albums here, and it seems meant to disrupt the idea that Springsteen transitioned smoothly from the lo-fi 'Nebraska' in 1982 to the arena-geared anthems of 'Born in the U.S.A.' in 1984; this lost LP, which the singer cut mostly on his own in a little apartment above a house he'd bought in the Hollywood Hills, suggests that he was tempted to stay in that more writerly zone instead of lunging for the MTV of it all. To my mind, it's making the argument that perhaps he didn't go quite as eagerly as we thought — that even back then he was weighing the benefits and the costs of becoming a sex symbol in a pair of bum-hugging jeans. The other thing I think 'Tracks II' is trying to do is correct the record regarding Springsteen in the '90s. He released three albums in the decade of grunge, none of which did particularly well (at least by Boss standards). Yet here are three more LPs that tell us he was busy experimenting at that time rather than merely waiting for Pearl Jam's moment to pass: 'Streets of Philadelphia Sessions,' which grew out of the moment that yielded his Oscar-winning theme from Jonathan Demme's 'Philadelphia,' has him dabbling in synths and drum loops; 'Somewhere North of Nashville' is a frisky country record he made at the same time as the more contemplative 'Ghost of Tom Joad'; 'Inyo' takes inspiration from the Mexican music he says he heard while riding around Southern California on his motorcycle. These acts of lore maintenance closely follow Springsteen's memoir and his one-man Broadway show and a number of recent documentaries, and of course 'Tracks II' is coming out right before the splashy biopic that promises to set off a Boss-aissance not unlike the one 'A Complete Unknown' did last year for Bob Dylan. But what do you think, August, of this perceived need to adjust Springsteen's framing? Does he strike you in 2025 as an artist that anyone might possibly have gotten wrong? August Brown: I think you're onto something, Mikael: This box is a reclamation of Springsteen as a challenging, skeptical songwriter even during the periods when his pop-culture status elevated him in ways that now seem inevitable — mythic, even. There's never been a more fruitful age for fans who want to dig under the hood of Springsteen's process. The hugely successful Broadway show and his critically acclaimed book laid the groundwork for 'Deliver Me From Nowhere,' which looks to capture him at the bleak, brilliant, transitional moment of 'Nebraska.' That's a time Springsteen has described as 'depression … spewing like an oil spill all over the beautiful turquoise-green gulf of my carefully planned and controlled existence.' He compared depression to a 'black sludge … threatening to smother every last living part of me.' Can you imagine being a film exec who's gotten the rights to a Bruce biopic only to be told you're getting the story of his most impeccably miserable solo record? But it comes alongside 'Tracks II,' which adds a ton of new texture and spiky context to the era when Bruce exploded from blue-collar ambassador into a global superstar. I agree that 'L.A. Garage Sessions '83' shows his mixed emotions about becoming the most famous tuchus in the country if that came at the expense of his literary aspirations. It's wild to discover that as he was channeling the bombast of 'Born In the U.S.A.,' he was also spinning out 'The Klansman,' a brooding character study of American evil that promises, 'When the war between the races leaves us in a fiery dream / It'll be a Klansman who will wipe this country clean / This, son, is my dream.' Wood: Talk about dancing in the dark. Beyond the four albums we've mentioned, 'Tracks II' also contains 'Faithless,' which Springsteen describes as the soundtrack to an abandoned 'spiritual Western' he was involved with in the mid-2000s; the snazzily orchestrated 'Twilight Hours'; and 'Perfect World,' which departs from the box set's concept by simply rounding up 10 fist-pumping rock songs that never found a proper home as he recorded them over the last few decades. (In the essay that accompanies 'Perfect World,' he says 'If I Could Only Be Your Lover' almost made it on 2012's 'Wrecking Ball' — 'but it wasn't political enough.') Taken together, the variety of the work here makes you wonder: Is anyone more flexible among Springsteen's boomer-royalty peers? I'd say Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder are both capable of doing as many different things, though I'm not sure either has been driven to actually do them for ages. Taken one by one, the albums show how committed Springsteen was to each style he was taking up. Brown: I especially like the horny-apocalyptic mode of 'Waiting on the End of the World,' from 'Streets of Philadelphia Sessions.' But I've been turning back most often to 'Inyo,' which finds him squarely in the Townes Van Zandt mode of regally weary minimalism as he conjures scenes of the the California desert and border-town Mexico — a genre setting that feels especially resonant from our vantage point of an L.A. under siege. Speaking of which: To me, one of the most interesting things about this set of narrative-upending albums is that it arrives at a Trump-dominated moment when Springsteen's status as the bard of working-class white America is probably as inaccurate as it's ever been. I remember seeing Bruce back on 2004's Vote for Change tour with openers Bright Eyes and R.E.M., imploring my fellow young Floridians to come out for John Kerry. (We all know how that turned out.) And it's heartening to see him still on the road, laying into what he sees as the creep of totalitarianism every night in his eighth decade of life. But who are we kidding? Any MAGA types who once would have listened to the Boss' thoughts on organized labor and resisting fascism are probably gone forever — even if it does needle the actual '80s Tri-State Area Guy currently occupying the White House. At best, those blue-collar dudes are in line today for Zach Bryan; more likely, they're listening to Morgan Wallen. Wood: I can't imagine that the reported half-billion dollars Springsteen made in 2021 by selling his catalog did much to dissuade those inclined to view him as a coastal elite long since grown out of touch with the common man. (Bruce and Don: just two rich guys fighting for the soul of Lunchpail Larry.) Your point about 'Inyo' makes me think about how much of the 'Tracks II' music grew out of Springsteen's time in California, a place he seemed to view in the '80s and '90s as both a refuge from fame and a source of creative renewal. The essay accompanying 'Streets of Philadelphia Sessions,' for instance, tells us that he cut the demos for that lost album at his place in Bel-Air, where he'd moved after his Hollywood Hills home was damaged in the Northridge earthquake; evidently, Springsteen started using drum loops because he'd gotten deep into West Coast hip-hop. Given that this was early 1994, I wonder if he was also hearing Beck's 'Loser' on KROQ — something a song like the casually funky 'Blind Spot' certainly suggests was the case. I like the idea that an artist so steeped in the history and mythology of New Jersey found his wheels turning in new directions here. Brown: Whatever's happened to his ability to rally the middle of the country, 'Tracks II' shows that the one person Springsteen could always push was himself — wherever the muse took him, even at the height of his celebrity. I can see why he shelved these restless yet fully realized little albums, as they would have complicated his lore at a time when rock music was shifting underneath him, just before his 2000s renaissance with 'The Rising.' But they deepen and affirm what, I think, 'Deliver Me From Nowhere' is trying to do for his '70s era: demonstrate that Bruce's ubiquity in the '80s — and the new churn of rock in the '90s — left him uneasy and turning back to the sturdy craftsmanship and scene-setting experiments he loved. These records don't reveal anything jaw-dropping about his ambitions, but they show that given the choice of being an artist or a hero, he never shortchanged the former even when the culture was begging for the latter. I mentioned that 'Inyo' is probably my favorite of the lost albums. How about you? Wood: It's probably the biggest outlier in the bunch, but I'm fascinated by 'Twilight Hours,' which collects songs Springsteen cut during the sessions that yielded 2019's 'Western Stars.' That record had a gleaming Glen Campbell vibe, but this one is moodier and more downcast; it leans toward the Sinatra of 'In the Wee Small Hours,' with Bruce singing about loneliness and regret amid arrangements lush with horns and strings. (For a comparison, you might think of Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach's 'Painted from Memory,' from 1998.) Springsteen's vocals here are intimate yet highly theatrical — a mode of 'doomed romanticism,' as he put it in an interview with the Times of London. It's a nostalgic record, for sure, but there's something mysterious about it too, as though he's not quite sure what precisely he's longing for, or why. Like 'Tracks II' as a whole, 'Twilight Hours' is about the road untaken, and it sounds both haunted and enriched by possibility.
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
The Searchers, 60s chart toppers, to bow out at Glastonbury
By Paul Sandle The Searchers, 60s chart toppers, to bow out at Glastonbury GLASTONBURY, England, - The Searchers, the Liverpool band that topped the charts in the 1960s with "Sweets for My Sweet", "Needles and Pins" and "Don't Throw Your Love Away", will play their final show at Glastonbury Festival on Friday after 66 years of touring. Formed in 1959 by John McNally and Mike Pender, the group was part of the Merseybeat scene alongside Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Beatles that broke through in the early 1960s before finding success in the United States. Bass player and singer Frank Allen, who joined in 1964, said The Searchers had played "final" gigs before but decided to come back one last time after an invitation from the festival in southwestern England. "We had said that was it, unless something comes up that we really couldn't turn down," Allen, 81, told Reuters. "If there was going to be a bigger one to end on, then that's the one." "It will be mostly the hits, a few little things, tributes maybe to some of the other people that we've toured with over the years." The band has shared bills with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Cliff Richard, as well as Motown artists in the U.S., he said. After playing to screaming fans in the 1960s, tastes changed in the 1970s and the band moved to the club circuit. "We survived and we came out the other side bigger and better," Allen said. "And as we hit the end of the 70s, everything took off again and there was a new respect for everything we'd done in the past." Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty are among those who said they were influenced by the group's sound, he said. Other performers at Worthy Farm this year include Neil Young, 79, and Rod Stewart, 80. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
