Artist

Bruce Springsteen

Born in Long Branch, New Jersey, 1949 21 studio albums 1 dive so far

He gets called the working man’s poet so often the phrase has gone soft, but the New Jersey he writes about is specific: refineries, boardwalks out of season, the kid in the car at the edge of town wondering whether leaving is brave or just running. He signed to Columbia in 1972 and the early records sang. “Born to Run,” in 1975, was the breakthrough, the one where the escape sounds possible and you believe it for the length of the song.

Then he kept writing, and the leaving got more complicated. Some of his characters get out. Most of them stay, work, lose the work, and have to figure out what is left. He has said it himself: one of his most famous songs is about wanting to run, and another is about standing somewhere. The whole career lives in that tension.

The E Street Band makes the noise enormous, but the songs were built on a four-track in a bedroom as often as in a studio. That is the thing to hold onto here. The biggest sound he ever made started as one man, one guitar, and a tape machine. Start with the song the whole country got wrong.

Worth knowing

He drafted "Born to Run" as the song about getting out and "Born in the U.S.A." as the song about staying put. In his own words, one was about leaving; the other was about standing someplace. Two of his most famous titles, pointing in exactly opposite directions, on purpose.