BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S TRACKS II: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

Bruce Springsteen officially announced the release of his long-awaited Tracks II box set this week, due out 27th June. Tracks II: The Lost Albums is made up of 7 unreleased albums, all recorded between 1983 and 2018, which Springsteen has tinkered with and finished over the decades. It’s an absolutely gargantuan release containing 83 songs – 72 of which have never been officially released in any form by Springsteen – across 9 discs of vinyl or 7 CDs. This is the single largest drop of new music in Bruce Springsteen’s career. It is wholly unprecedented. Here’s everything you need to know.

TRACKS – 1998

The original Tracks box set was released back in 1998. It is a 4 CD collection of 66 outtakes, alternate takes, b-sides, and rarities, presented in chronological order to represent an alternate career path for the global mega star. Tracks was an instant fan favourite, with songs like My Love Will Not Let You Down, Take Them As They Come, and Where The Bands Are getting some prominent placement on Springsteen’s 1999-2000 Reunion Tour. Of course, as with any fan base that “knows more about me than I do myself” as the man himself put it, there were a few glaring omissions with the 1998 release. This was slightly rectified on 1999’s compilation album, 18 Tracks, which was a collection of 15 songs from the big box set plus 3 more songs – The Promise, Trouble River, and The Fever. Over the past 27 years, Springsteen has released quite a bit more from the vault, including:

• 2003’s Essential Bruce Springsteen featured a bonus disc of 12 unreleased songs.
• 2010’s The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story contained The Promise, a 3xLP, 22 song album of outtakes from the 1977-78 sessions. 
• 2015 The Ties That Bind box set featured the original single-LP The Ties That Bind album, which eventually became 1980’s The River, alongside a further 11 unreleased outtakes from the The River sessions.
• 2016’s Chapter & Verse, which was released to accompany Bruce’s excellent and essential autobiography, opened with 5 unreleased songs from his pre-1973 era. 
• 2018’s The Album Collection Vol. 2 1987–1996 was accompanied by a digital-only playlist of rarities and b-sides from the era called Spare Parts. 
• Additionally, in November 2014 Bruce Springsteen started his Live Archive series, which has over 100 releases to date of complete live concerts from Springsteen’s pre-2014 years.

Despite all of these incredible releases, the fervor for a follow up to Tracks never died down among the Springsteen faithful. The clamour for what fans dubbed Tracks II (that’s II, not 2) only increased with every release that had song titles or recording snippets that didn’t end up on the final project.

After the pandemic, Bruce did an interview where he mentioned that Tracks II was an active project, and that it would be a collection of unreleased albums. In late 2024, Springsteen’s socials promised a big next year that would contain some sort of retrospective looking back. And then, on 1st April, his social media teased “What Was Lost Has Now Been Found” with the date of 3rd April….. and here we are.

TRACKS II – THE LOST ALBUMS

So. Tracks II is real, it’s official, and it is actually Tracks II: The Lost Albums. It contains the following seven unique and distinct albums:

1. LA Garage Sessions ‘83
2. Streets of Philadelphia Sessions
3. Faithless
4. Somewhere North Of Nashville
5. Inyo
6. Twilight Hours
7. Perfect World

Springsteen says “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. I’m glad you’ll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.” Thanks to an incredibly dedicated fanbase and some excellent online resources such as BruceBase, we know a lot about some of these albums, but very little about others. Only some of the 83 songs have been previously officially released in some shape or form. Here’s a playlist with those tracks, plus Tracks II’s lead single, Rain In The River, and a few more recordings that can give us a taste of what to expect from the big box set on 27th June:

Seven albums, each with their own album art, distinct sound, thematic throughlines, and history. Let’s go through them one by one.

LA Garage Sessions ‘83

This is the album we know the most about. It’s described as the lo-fi link between Nebraska and Born In The USA, and a vast majority, if not all, of these songs have leaked over the years. We don’t know how they’ll sound on this specific release, but the versions that have circulated among fans are a kind of surf-rock meets garage-country hybrid; all twang and grit with songs of defeat, despair, and isolation. Many of these songs are held in very high regard by the fandom – Sugarland, The Klansman, and Follow That Dream are often talked about as some of the best work Springsteen has never released. Of the 18 tracks, 5 have been officially released in some fashion, the most of any of these seven records. 

Follow That Dream is an Elvis Presely song that Springsteen has significantly rewritten and rearranged and has been played live 51 times between 1981 and 2017. Six of those have been released on the live archive series, and one is available on streaming services. Johnny Bye-Bye was released in a full-band arrangement as the b-side to I’m On Fire and on Tracks, and has been played live a few times, one of which has been released to streaming. County Fair was released on Essential Bruce Springsteen Disc 3 in what could be described as a lo-fi country arrangement and likely is the closest to what you can expect from LA Garage Sessions ‘83. My Hometown is the closing track on the Born In The USA album. Lastly, Shut Out The Light is the b-side to the Born In The USA single, and was also released on Tracks.

Nebraska, Born In The USA, and the songs from that era represent some of the darkest and bleakest thematic work in Springsteen’s catalog. Following his taste of superstardom in 1980 and 81 with his first top ten hit and global arena tour, Bruce returned to his home state of New Jersey with money, a shiny new car, and a profound sense of loneliness. As the story goes, between 17 December 1981 and 3 January 1982, he sat in his bedroom with a four-track recorder, an acoustic guitar, and a harmonica, and channeled that isolation into a series of homemade demos. 10 of those very bedroom recordings would become the Nebraska album, and a further six would become the backbone for the Born In The USA album. Ironically, and intentionally, from the depths of these recordings came Springsteen’s biggest ever album and tour. This is the subject of the upcoming Deliver Me From Nowhere film, starring Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, and Stephen Graham.

Every Bruce superfan you know has had a period in their life where they listened to Nebraska exclusively until they realised that they were depressed and needed to, simply, just not listen to Nebraska for a while. After diving deep on Nebraska, the slick pop production of the Born In The USA recordings fades away and the broken human beings in the narratives become more prominent. LA Garage Sessions ‘83 promises to bridge these two records, and we can expect these songs to be solo, but upbeat; lo-fi, but still electric.

Tracklist:

1. Follow That Dream
2. Don’t Back Down On Our Love
3. Little Girl Like You
4. Johnny Bye Bye
5. Sugarland
6. Seven Tears
7. Fugitive’s Dream
8. Black Mountain Ballad
9. Jim Deer
10. County Fair
11. My Hometown
12. One Love
13. Don’t Back Down
14. Richfield Whistle
15. The Klansman
16. Unsatisfied Heart
17. Shut Out The Light
18. Fugitive’s Dream (Ballad) 

Streets of Philadelphia Sessions

Jumping ahead a whole 12 years, in the early 90s Bruce found himself amidst a strange combination of career lows and highs. He had fired the E Street band, recorded and released two albums with session musicians, and embarked on an extensive two year world tour with a backing band fans dubbed “The Other Band.” All of this was fun, and people loved the shows, but none of it was as creative or interesting as any of his work up to that point, and critics noticed. With the early 90’s introduction of grunge, Springsteen’s heartland rock and americana singer-songwriter personas quickly became relics of a distant, forgotten past. 

The very next year, Springsteen won his first Oscar and Golden Globe with Streets of Philadelphia, which also went to number 1 in Ireland, Germany, France and Austria, number 2 in the UK, number 4 in Australia, and number 9 in the US, and scored him four Grammy wins. Streets of Philadelphia represented a very new sound for Springsteen, with its spare instrumentation made mostly of pre-recorded drum loops and synthesizers. Springsteen followed this up with another song for a film, this track titled Secret Garden, which again was critically and commercially successful.

He followed this newfound success not by doubling down on his new sound but instead by releasing his first Greatest Hits record, an EP with the E Street Band, and a mostly-solo-acoustic singer-songwriter record called The Ghost Of Tom Joad. Springsteen adopted an ex-con look with slick back hair and high waisted trousers and toured acoustically for two years. The drum loops and synths era disappeared as quickly as it came.

Rumours were rampant that Springsteen recorded an entire record in that time, and fans have been talking about the “hip-hop” album for decades. Well, here it is. Waiting On The End Of The World circulates among fans, and Secret Garden was released on Greatest Hits. Blind Spot is known to be a song title, but we don’t know anything the song itself, or anything about the rest of the tracklist. Expect this to be low-key and vibey, with lots of ominous sounding synths and dense drumbeats.

The Little Things very well may be a studio version of It’s The Little Things, a humorous song about a one night stand Springsteen has played live on the The Ghost Of Tom Joad tour.

Tracklist:

1. Blind Spot
2. Maybe I Don’t Know You
3. Something In The Well
4. Waiting On The End Of The World
5. The Little Things
6. We Fell Down
7. One Beautiful Morning
8. Between Heaven and Earth
9. Secret Garden
10. The Farewell Party

Faithless

Faithless is the album in this box that we know the least about. We know from the press release that it’s the soundtrack to a film that was never made, and Rolling Stone reports that it was recorded sometime between 2005 and 2006. Aside from that, we know nothing – we don’t have any details of the film, and none of this material has leaked or been released in any form.

Springsteen has done two other soundtrack-eque projects. In 2014, Springsteen co-directed the music video for his song Hunter Of Invisible Game, which had a full 5 minutes of an extended score-like intro from Springsteen. In 2019, he released his expansive, orchestral western-noir album Western Stars, which had a companion film of the same title. Springsteen recorded musical interludes for that film. Both of these projects are heavy on grand sweeping strings, so it’s a fair assumption that Faithless may be in a similar vein.

Interestingly, a lot of the song titles appear to have religious themes: Faithless, A Prayer By The River, God Sent You, All God’s Children.

Tracklist:

1. The Desert (Instrumental)
2. Where You Goin’, Where You From
3. Faithless
4. All God’s Children
5. A Prayer By The River (Instrumental)
6. God Sent You
7. Goin’ To California
8. The Western Sea (Instrumental)
9. My Master’s Hand
10. Let Me Ride
11. My Master’s Hand (Theme)

Somewhere North of Nashville

Somewhere North Of Nashville is a song from the aforementioned Western Stars album, and shows up here as a title track. On Western Stars it’s a short steel-stringed ditty that acts as a sort of interlude from the full orchestration of the rest of the record. Also present on this Somewhere North Of Nashville album is Janey Don’t You Lose Heart, which was released as the b-side to I’m Going Down, and Stand On It, which was released as the b-side to Glory Days , both of which were on the original Tracks and have been played a few times live. Track two, Tiger Rose, was played live twice at benefit shows in 2001 and released by rockabilly legend Sonny Burgess in 1996.

Somewhere North Of Nashville was reportedly recorded in May 1995, shortly after the mini E Street Band reunion, and is “country-inflected.”  Considering Tiger Rose was recorded by a rockabilly legend, and Stand On It is some high-octane rockabilly, it’s safe to say this should be a fun, rollicking time.

Tracklist:

1. Repo Man
2. Tiger Rose
3. Poor Side of Town
4. Delivery Man
5. Under A Big Sky
6. Detail Man
7. Silver Mountain
8. Janey Don’t You Lose Heart
9. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone
10. Stand On It
11. Blue Highway
12. Somewhere North of Nashville

Inyo

Inyo is another album we know very little about. None of these songs have leaked or been released previously. The press release states that Inyo is a collection of “richly woven border tales,” and Rolling Stone reports that it was recorded while Springsteen was on his The Ghost of Tom Joad tour between 1995 and 1997. Additionally, in 2014, Patti Scialfa, Springsteen’s wife, posted a video on Instagram of Bruce in the studio recording mariachi music, with the caption “Mariachi real de Mexico “@ThrillHill Rehearsal/Recording for The Lost Charro #newmusic #mariachi”, which has since been deleted. 

We really don’t have any reference points for Inyo aside from that Instagram snippet.

Tracklist:

1. Inyo
2. Indian Town
3. Adelita
4. The Aztec Dance
5. The Lost Charro
6. Our Lady of Monroe
7. El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona)
8. One False Move
9. Ciudad Juarez
10. When I Build My Beautiful House

Twilight Hours

This is the most recent music in the box set, recorded in 2018 alongside Western Stars. Once again, this is a collection of songs we know very little about. We know that I’ll Stand By You is a song Bruce wrote for the first Harry Potter film in 2001 and it was ultimately not used because the production wanted to keep everything a) British and b) scored by John Williams. It was eventually used in Blinded By The Light, a film set to Springsteen’s music, against the backdrop of working class Luton in the 1980s, and was released on that film’s soundtrack. Twilight Hours is described as orchestra-driven, mid-century noir – so think Western Stars, but with fewer desert scenes. 

Tracklist:

1. Sunday Love
2. Late in the Evening
3. Two of Us
4. Lonely Town
5. September Kisses
6. Twilight Hours
7. I’ll Stand By You
8. High Sierra
9. Sunliner
10. Another You
11. Dinner at Eight
12. Follow The Sun

Perfect World

According to The New York Times, Perfect World is the only one of these albums that was not always an album, but rather came together for this project. Lead single Rain In The River is a big, bombastic rocker, with pounding drums and pinch-harmonic guitars. It’s very reminiscent of Springsteen’s few mid-90’s rockers – which makes sense, because opening tracks I’m Not Sleeping, Idiot’s Delight, and Another Thin Line have all been previously recorded and released by Joe Gruscheky, whom Springsteen collaborated with in the mid-90s for Gruscheky’s American Babylon album. All three songs have been performed by Springsteen over the years, but his versions have not been officially released. Springsteen’s studio recording of Idiot’s Delight was played once on episode five of ‘From His Home To Yours,’ Springsteen’s pandemic-era radio series, which aired on 3rd June 2020 on E Street Radio, but again, was not put out via official distribution channels.

It’s worth noting that while this album is described as having an “arena-ready E-Street flavor,” that doesn’t mean it’s been recorded with the E Street Band, nor does it mean Springsteen and the band will play any of it on their upcoming tour dates.

Perfect World is also the only one of the seven records whose album art has been released:

Tracklist:

1. I’m Not Sleeping
2. Idiot’s Delight
3. Another Thin Line
4. The Great Depression
5. Blind Man
6. Rain In The River
7. If I Could Only Be Your Lover
8. Cutting Knife
9. You Lifted Me Up
10. Perfect World

Lost and Found

In addition to the seven albums, there is a compilation record entitled Lost and Found. Similar to 1999’s 18 Tracks, this record is a selection of songs from the larger box set, presented in the same order as in the main box. All seven records are represented mostly equally across the twenty song tracklist, with three songs each, aside from Faithless which only gets two.

Unlike 18 Tracks, there aren’t any songs on Lost and Found that are not also present on the main set.

Tracklist:

1. Follow That Dream 
2. Seven Tears 
3. Unsatisfied Heart 
4. Blind Spot 
5. Something In The Well
6. Waiting On The End Of The World 
7. Faithless 
8. God Sent You 
9. Repo Man 
10. Detail Man
11. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone 
12. The Lost Charro 
13. Inyo 
14. Adelita 
15. Sunday Love
16. High Sierra 
17. Sunliner 
18. I’m Not Sleeping 
19. Rain in the River 
20. You Lifted Me Up

What’s Left?

It’s worth noting, that despite these seven albums, there’s still a lot that’s left in the vault. There are the recordings of Gary US Bonds’ Dedication and On The Line albums with Springsteen’s vocals. There’s a few dozen outtakes from The Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River, and Born in The USA sessions that are still being held back. There’s the full-band so-called “Electric Nebraska” recordings, and there’s the 1986-87 solo sessions, 2001 E Street sessions, and the rumored late 2000’s gospel album that was recorded before 2012’s Wrecking Ball. This is only a selection of what we know about…

That being said, Tracks II: The Lost Albums is a treasure trove of new material, and a massive gift to us superfans, especially in the world of streaming where we’ll have access to all 83 songs on release day for just our usual subscription service fee. It sure seems to be a wide-ranging, diverse collection, one that will greatly expand upon Springsteen’s already-rich canon. Some of these albums – such as Faithless and Inyo – hint at sounds and genres we’ve never seen from Springsteen, while others will grow upon the styles that he’s already known and loved for.

For physical collectors, there is a vinyl box set and cd box set that is available for preorder now. Both boxes come with a 100-page cloth-bound, hardcover book featuring rare archival photos, liner notes on each lost album from essayist Erik Flannigan and a personal introduction on the project from Springsteen himself. Each of the seven records will have its own unique album art and sleeve. Lost And Found is also available for pre-order as a 2xLP set, and there’s a merch line, too, with t-shirts and jumpers and all the rest. Everything is available at https://brucespringsteenuk.store/. Springsteen’s social media says to pay attention weekly for new updates.

Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band will be on tour this summer, with five dates in the UK:
14 May – Co-Op Arena, Manchester
17 May – Co-Op Arena, Manchester
20 May – Co-Op Arena, Manchester
4 June – Anfield Stadium, Liverpool
7th June – Anfield Stadium, Liverpol

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