Latest news with #Tracks
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Listen: Bruce Springsteen releases 'Tracks II' album of 83 never-heard songs
June 27 (UPI) -- Bruce Springsteen is back with new music. The "Born to Run" singer, 75, released Tracks II: The Lost Albums Friday, which includes 83 never-heard songs from seven previously-unreleased albums. "The Lost Albums were full records -- some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released. I've played this music to myself and often close friends for years now," he said in a statement."I'm glad you'll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them." Springsteen last released the 15-track album Only the Strong Survive in 2022. The first Tracks album contained 69 songs and arrived in 1998. "Just building my mansion in the evening sun, glory hallelujah," he sings in "Where You Going, Where You From" on his latest album. "I've got scotch in a whiskey bottle, I've got a round in my Hawken gun. I've got a smile that ain't a smile, black powder on my thumb." A post announcing the new release was met with positive support from fans, who commented about their excitement. "I cannot be more grateful for these new albums," one commenter said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Bruce Springsteen (@springsteen) Springsteen is the subject of the upcoming biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, starring The Bear actor Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen.
UPI
a day ago
- Entertainment
- UPI
Listen: Bruce Springsteen releases 'Tracks II' album of 83 never-heard songs
1 of 4 | Singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen released an album with never-heard songs on Friday. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo June 27 (UPI) -- Bruce Springsteen is back with new music. The "Born to Run" singer, 75, released Tracks II: The Lost Albums Friday, which includes 83 never-heard songs from seven previously-unreleased albums. "The Lost Albums were full records -- some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released. I've played this music to myself and often close friends for years now," he said in a statement."I'm glad you'll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them." Springsteen last released the 15-track album Only the Strong Survive in 2022. The first Tracks album contained 69 songs and arrived in 1998. "Just building my mansion in the evening sun, glory hallelujah," he sings in "Where You Going, Where You From" on his latest album. "I've got scotch in a whiskey bottle, I've got a round in my Hawken gun. I've got a smile that ain't a smile, black powder on my thumb." A post announcing the new release was met with positive support from fans, who commented about their excitement. "I cannot be more grateful for these new albums," one commenter said. Springsteen is the subject of the upcoming biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, starring The Bear actor Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen turns 75: a look back at the rock icon Bruce Springsteen opened the four-concert finale to his 15 month tour at the Coliseum in Los Angeles with the hit song "Born in the U.S.A," on September 27, 1985. UPI Photos | License Photo
Los Angeles Times
2 days 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.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bruce Springsteen's 83-song ‘Lost Albums' is the greatest musical treasure trove of all time
This is surely the greatest box set of all time. It is what box sets were invented for, an alternative history of one of the great musical artists of our age that is every bit as compelling as his actual history. Bruce Springsteen, Tracks II: The Lost Albums features seven unreleased albums written and recorded between 1983 and 2018, including 83 original songs, only nine of which have been heard before (and seven of those in completely different versions). These are not sketches, demos or drafts. They are complete albums, finished to the last detail. It is awe-inspiring to contemplate, like stumbling across a buried treasure trove of one of the greatest talents in his field, created at the peak of his powers, then put aside for mysterious reasons, locked away and forgotten. Or almost. As Springsteen has said of his prolific songwriting, when a song doesn't fit his plans, 'I put them away, but I don't throw them away.' Tracks II is a companion to 1998's Tracks, a compilation of 66 out-takes and leftovers from 1972 and 1995. But that pales beside what Springsteen has accomplished here. The great singer-songwriter spent the pandemic going through his personal archives, completing albums that in some cases only he knew even existed. Now, 83 songs is a lot of music for even the most ardent fan to consume in one gulp. It is a testament to the lofty level at which Springsteen operates that this stuff is genuinely good. There's not a single sloppy demo or half-hearted throwaway among them. Which is not to suggest it is better than his official discography of 11 studio albums released during the same period. It is just different – the work of an artist exploring alternative possibilities. 'Many of these records were done on a whim,' he writes in the copious liner notes, 'experimenting with genres out of my wheelhouse.' Among the revelations here are: a lush, noirish orchestral album in a Burt Bacharach vein (Twilight Hours); a moody soundtrack to a spiritual western (Faithless); a sombre Tex-Mex record about the South American diaspora (Inyo); and an atmospheric trip-hop album of brooding broken love songs (The Streets of Philadelphia Sessions). Exploring the loops and synths of Springsteen's Oscar-winning theme song to the film of the same name, that last's 10 hypnotic, poppy tracks might have set him on an entirely different course had it been released in 1994. But that seems to have been the problem for a man who thinks deeply about his relationship with his fans. 'It was a really dark album, something I didn't know if the audience was ready for,' he says now, pointing out that it would have followed three albums focused on relationships (Tunnel of Love, Human Touch and Lucky Town). Instead, in 1994, he reconvened the E Street Band for a Greatest Hits tour, then went on to release a solo acoustic set of political Americana (1995's masterful The Ghost of Tom Joad). Simultaneously, he recorded an album of storming, joyous country rock just to let off some steam, here unveiled as the rousing Somewhere North of Nashville. Springsteen's work ethic makes most modern music artists look like dilettantes. Songwriting may come easily to him, but he still puts the work in, chases inspiration when it strikes, recording songs to presentable levels rather than leaving unfinished sketches for a later date (which, as every procrastinator knows, will most often never come). In 1982, new home recording technology gave him the freedom to make his simplest, starkest record, Nebraska. It now turns out there was another homemade album from that period, LA Garage Session '83, recorded in a converted garage in Los Angeles. Lighter and brighter than Nebraska, tinged with now dated synths, it lacks the vision of his finest work and is too modest to have delivered the superstardom affirmed by 1984's Born in the USA. But the actual songcraft is impeccable. The Klansman offers a spartan folk narrative of evil lurking in America's soul that resonates chillingly today, while Shut Out the Light contrasts an army veteran's junkie nightmare with a soul-lifting chorus that hints at themes more fully explored on Born in the USA. That is the thing, I think, that elevates Springsteen's archival releases. It is not so much that this box set is crammed with lost masterpieces, but rather that nothing here feels negligible. Much of Springsteen's work follows familiar folk and blues forms with uncomplicated rhythmic and chordal structures. But within such basic frameworks, he crafts vivid character studies and vignettes, heavy with deeper implications and painted with surprising musical flourishes. Collaborators from the E Street Band and other ensembles colour in the edges. Springsteen's emotionally precise and always commanding vocals tie it all together. There is an abundance of marvels to be found on the mesmerically intense Inyo. The Aztec Dance and Ciudad Juarez might seem minor works on first listen but reveal awe-inspiring depths on closer inspection. Springsteen doesn't really do throwaway. There are also some absolute belters. Springsteen worried that an album full of sophisticated, romantic, orchestral Broadway show-tune songcraft and smooth crooning might have perplexed fans in the wake of his melancholy country masterpiece of 2019, Western Stars. But the simultaneously recorded Twilight Hours is astonishing in its own right. High Sierra evokes love and tragedy with the grandeur of classic film noir. It conjures the tantalising vision of Springsteen as the musical heir to Frank Sinatra at his most romantically bruised. All that said, probably my own favourite album here is one he never planned. Perfect World is a compilation of leftovers sequenced into a cohesive set of full-power rock. If I Could Only Be Your Lover was intended for his fantastic 2012 album Wrecking Ball, but 'wasn't political enough.' Its longing narrative of an imagined alternative life could serve as the theme for this entire project, a soaring epic of roads not taken. The box set is not cheap. It will set you back £295 for a nine-disc vinyl limited edition, or £260 for a seven-disc CD set. For the less committed, there is a compilation titled Lost and Found featuring 20 of the outstanding highlights. It is a lot of money, but this is not some bonus disc or retrospective elaborating on an all-time great artist's history – it completely rewrites Springsteen's career. A classic discography that previously ran to 21 albums has been expanded to 29. And there is more where this came from. Springsteen has promised Tracks Volume III – but only after he has put out his next (already completed) solo album and a separate album of covers. Much of the work here was recorded in the 1990s, often regarded as Springsteen's most fallow period, in which he only released three official albums. 'I read about myself having a lost period in the Nineties,' Springsteen has noted, citing the excuse that he had a young family and felt 'burned out' with the demands of touring. 'But I was working on music all the time. I just wasn't releasing it.' I guess that's one advantage of being your own Boss. This remarkable, belated release reminds us exactly why, of all the rock stars of the modern age, Springsteen remains uniquely deserving of that title. Track II: The Lost Albums is released on June 27, via Columbia Records Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bruce Springsteen's ‘Tracks II: The Lost Albums' comes out this Friday. Critics are calling it the greatest box set of all time.
Bruce Springsteen is releasing on Friday a treasure trove of 83 previously unreleased songs. Tracks II: The Lost Albums is a box set of seven albums written and recorded by Springsteen between 1983 and 2018. Of the included 83 songs, 74 of them have never been heard before in any form. ''The Lost Albums' were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,' Springsteen wrote in a statement. 'I've played this music to myself and often close friends for years now. I'm glad you'll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.' Tracks II is the sequel to Springsteen's first multi-album release from 1998, Tracks, which consisted of a four-CD box set with 66 unreleased songs. While the original Tracks was 'arranged in a loosely chronological order,' Tracks II differs in that it's distinctly categorized into seven disparate albums. 'These were actual albums that were of a piece, of a moment, of a genre — that fell together, often while working on other albums,' the 75-year-old hitmaker told the New York Times last week. The release of Tracks II comes less than two weeks after 20th Century Studios released the first official trailer for the forthcoming Springsteen biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White. Below is everything to know about Tracks II ahead of its highly anticipated debut. Tracks II: The Lost Albums will feature a whopping 83 previously unreleased songs spanning seven separate albums. The seven album titles, along with their respective track lists, are as follows:'Follow That Dream' 'Don't Back Down on Our Love' 'Little Girl Like You' 'Johnny Bye Bye' 'Sugarland' 'Seven Tears' 'Fugitive's Dream' 'Black Mountain Ballad' 'Jim Deer' 'County Fair' 'My Hometown' 'One Love' 'Don't Back Down' 'Richfield Whistle' 'The Klansman' 'Unsatisfied Heart' 'Shut Out The Light' 'Fugitive's Dream (Ballad)''Blind Spot' 'Maybe I Don't Know You' 'Something In The Well' 'Waiting on the End of the World' 'The Little Things' 'We Fell Down' 'One Beautiful Morning' 'Between Heaven and Earth' 'Secret Garden' 'The Farewell Party''The Desert (Instrumental)' 'Where You Goin', Where You From' 'Faithless' 'All God's Children' 'A Prayer By The River (Instrumental)' 'God Sent You' 'Goin' To California' 'The Western Sea (Instrumental)' 'My Master's Hand' 'Let Me Ride' 'My Master's Hand (Theme)''Repo Man' 'Tiger Rose' 'Poor Side of Town' 'Delivery Man' 'Under A Big Sky' 'Detail Man' 'Silver Mountain' 'Janey Don't You Lose Heart' 'You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone' 'Stand On It' 'Blue Highway' 'Somewhere North of Nashville''Inyo' 'Indian Town' 'Adelita' 'The Aztec Dance' 'The Lost Charro' 'Our Lady of Monroe' 'El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona)' 'One False Move' 'Ciudad Juarez' 'When I Build My Beautiful House''Sunday Love' 'Late in the Evening' 'Two of Us' 'Lonely Town' 'September Kisses' 'Twilight Hours' 'I'll Stand By You' 'High Sierra' 'Sunliner' 'Another You' 'Dinner at Eight' 'Follow The Sun''I'm Not Sleeping' 'Idiot's Delight' 'Another Thin Line' 'The Great Depression' 'Blind Man' 'Rain In The River' 'If I Could Only Be Your Lover' 'Cutting Knife' 'You Lifted Me Up' 'Perfect World' While Tracks II will be available to stream in its entirety on all major platforms, the physical box set is also available for purchase. Springsteen fans are in for a treat: The seven-album box set includes a 100-page hardcover book with archival photos, liner notes on each album by archivist and music industry executive Erik Flannigan and an introduction to the project written by Springsteen himself. On Springsteen's official website, The Lost Albums seven-CD box set retails for $299.99. The assembly of Tracks II: The Lost Albums began in 2018, and Springsteen finished 'everything I had in my vault' in 2020. Springsteen, however, didn't release Tracks II until now because the timing didn't seem right. 'I believe I'm engaged in a conversation with my audience that has a certain ebb and flow as to when records are released,' he told the New York Times. Springsteen also spoke of how his music frequently explores themes like isolation and depression. 'A lot of my music deals with the idea of American isolation, he told the outlet, "which pours out of the streak of individualism that is a part of the country's personality. And also out of depression. You feel very isolated and alone. So I have a lot of characters who are fundamentally loners, which is a big part of my personality.' Read more from Yahoo: Rolling Stone calls Tracks II: The Lost Albums 'a tribute to Bruce Springsteen's stubborn streak' The Telegraph says it's 'the greatest box set of all time' Associated Press: The album 'gives Springsteen completists plenty to mull over' For starters, Springsteen has already finished his third archival release, Tracks III. ''Tracks III,' that is finished,' he told the New York Times. 'It's basically what was left in the vault … So there was a lot of good music left. There are five full albums of music.' Springsteen is also the subject of the forthcoming film, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which hits theaters this October. The biographical drama, starring Jeremy Allen White, is based on Warren Zanes's 2023 book of the same name that chronicles Springsteen's life before and after the recording of his sixth studio album, Nebraska, released in 1982. The album, recorded in Springsteen's bedroom, is one of his most acclaimed, for its stripped-down, acoustic sound and somber, introspective lyrics. 'I mean, there's some unusualness to it because the movie involves, in some ways, some of the most painful days of my life,' Springsteen told Rolling Stone of the film. 'But it was a great project, and Jeremy and Jeremy Strong [who plays manager Jon Landau] were both fantastic, terrific in it as were all the other actors. Stephen Graham plays my dad, and he's out of this world, but everybody that was engaged in the film, they were all tremendous.' Cover thumbnail photo: Nathan Morris/NurPhoto via Getty Images
