Bruce Springsteen
Ask Billboard: Bruce Springsteen & Elton John Share Another Week of Chart Headlines
Submit questions about Billboard charts, as well as general music musings, to askbb@billboard.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as your city, state and country, if outside the U.S. Or, tweet @gthot20. Let’s open the latest mailbag. Hi Gary, Bruce Springsteen debuts at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 chart this week with Only the Strong Survive, scoring his 22nd top 10 album. He has notched top 10s in each of the last six decades, from the 1970s to the 2020s. How rare is that feat, and are there any other notable chart achievements of his that we can celebrate this week? Thanks, Raditya Gunardisurya Jakarta, Indonesia Hi Raditya, Springsteen is one of only three artists with newly charting top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 in each of the last six ...
The 5 Best Displays at the New Bruce Springsteen Live! Exhibit at the Grammy Museum
“Once Bruce walks out on stage, the only question in my mind is: is this going to be an absolutely great show, one of the greatest shows he’s ever done or the greatest show he’s ever done? That’s the range,” says Bruce Springsteen’s longtime manager Jon Landau in a video at the new Bruce Springsteen Live! Exhibit at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news While that may be a bit (but only a little) hyperbolic, The Boss is renowned for both the high caliber and marathon duration of his concerts, and the exhibit — which officially opens Saturday (Oct. 15) and runs through April 2 — gives fans a backstage pass to five decades of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s live shows, including rare memorabilia and c...
Watch Bruce Springsteen Cover the Commodores’ ‘Nightshift’
The latest fruit of Bruce Springsteen‘s upcoming soul covers album Only the Strong Survive has arrived in the form of “Nightshift,” the Boss’ cover of the Commodores’ late-career, 1985 hit single. The track, which improbably reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the Commodores’ biggest hit in four years, is a tribute to late soul legends Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson. [embedded content][embedded content] “An essential song selection in the early creation of Only the Strong Survive, the track inspired Springsteen, his producer Ron Aniello and engineer Rob Lebret to christen themselves ‘The Nightshift’ while finishing this new record,” according to a statement. Springsteen previously released his version of Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” as the first single from O...
Bruce Springsteen and Jake Clemons Perform Three Songs With the Killers
The Killers‘ North American leg of their Imploding the Mirage tour has been eventful. Opener Johnny Marr has performed Smiths songs with the band, including several with his former Smiths bandmate Andy Rourke on Friday night at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. How did they top that? By calling over a friend from across the river. Ahead of Saturday night’s encore, the Killers singer Brandon Flowers said to the crowd that “everybody gets a little nervous when their boss shows up for work, right?” Flowers isn’t wrong, and he surprised the MSG audience with what he said next. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but me and my friends have been sweating bullets up here all night because the Boss is here. Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen.” And voila, Springsteen and E Street Band saxoph...
Bruce Springsteen Confirms Soul Covers Album, Only The Strong Survive
As tipped here last night, Bruce Springsteen has confirmed details for his next album, Only the Strong Survive, a soul covers project made in tandem with longtime producer Ron Aniello. It will be released Nov. 11 by Columbia Records. The first single is The Boss’ rendition of Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do),” which is accompanied by a Thom Zimny-directed video. [embedded content][embedded content] Springsteen said in an announcement video that he started making a different album during the COVID-19 lockdown period but scrapped it and eventually settled on Only the Strong Survive “because that’s how I roll. I kept recording and on my second try I found a theme I wanted to explore. This time, I decided to do something I’d never done before — make some music that is centered aroun...
Bruce Springsteen Teasing Soul-Tinged New Album
Bruce Springsteen is teasing an announcement tomorrow morning (Sept. 29) via his social media, and while no details have yet been confirmed, it seems The Boss is about to reveal a long-rumored new album featuring classic soul covers. The latest teaser features a static photo of an old car radio, with the audio recorded as if an unseen listener was turning the dial through static to a different channel every few seconds. Brief snippets can be heard of Springsteen performing Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do),” Tyrone Davis’ “Turn Back the Hands of Time” and The Commodores’ “Night Shift,” itself a tribute to the late Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye. SPIN understands Springsteen worked on the project with longtime producer Ron Aniello, his partner on four albums in the past decade. The...
Did Jann Wenner Accidentally Reveal New Bruce Springsteen Album Details?
Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner is making the media rounds to promote his memoir Like a Rolling Stone, and in an interview with Billboard, appears to have let the cat out of the bag about Bruce Springsteen‘s next album. Asked for his thoughts on current pop and hip-hop music, Wenner said a lot of it was “good” and a lot of it was “trash and trivial,” before adding that he’s “kind of stuck with the music I liked when I was young. Give me the Stones. There’s a new Bruce [Springsteen] record coming out this fall, which is stunning. I’m listening to that.” That detail is certainly news to Springsteen fans, considering there’s been no information confirmed or released about a new album by the artist’s representatives. If Wenner is correct, the project will be Springsteen’s first album since 2...
Baby, Those Tickets Were Born to Run
July 20 is a day many longtime Bruce Springsteen fans would like to forget. That morning, as the first six shows for The Boss’ 2023 North American tour went on sale through Ticketmaster, devotees were shocked to find most seats gone within seconds, and instead only “platinum” or dynamically priced tickets available for purchase — at costs as high as $5,000.“Surely, these multi-thousand-dollar prices were not intended or anticipated, many of us thought,” wrote the editors of the long-running Springsteen fan platform Backstreets. “Some assert the algorithm got out of control — are we sure that it was ever in control? We’d never expect Ticketmaster to balk at making money, but surely, many believed, Springsteen would put a stop to it and demand adjustments to the system, if not an overhaul, b...
The 50 Best Albums of 1982
Looking back at 1982 in music, the headline is obvious: Thriller Sells A Bajillion Copies, Becomes World’s Biggest Album. But is it the year’s best album? Funny enough, Michael Jackson‘s sixth LP hardly even affected the charts that year — it snuck out in late November, just as Men at Work’s 1981 blockbuster, Business as Usual, began its commercial stranglehold in the U.S. Only one record on our list, Fleetwood Mac‘s chart-targeted Tusk follow-up, Mirage, hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200. (Doesn’t it seem weird, looking back, that Prince‘s 1999 peaked at No. 9?) Lots of fascinating shit was happening in 1982, and you didn’t always find it on the radio. On our list, we included everything from early hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash) to horror-punk (Misfits) to lo-fi synth-pop (Solid Space). Revisit...
As Ticket Price Controversy Rages, Bruce Springsteen Joins Bleachers at Radio City
Bruce Springsteen has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in the past week, as fans have expressed outrage over Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” algorithm offering outrageously expensive seats to The Boss’ upcoming North American tour. Tonight (July 26), the artist briefly sidestepped the controversy by joining Bleachers at New York’s Radio City Music Hall for a surprise performance of “Chinatown,” their collaboration from the latter group’s 2021 album Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night. “We’ve only ever done it acoustic before, so let’s tear the fuckin’ roof off this place,” Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff shouted as the song kicked in, with Springsteen strumming an acoustic guitar and reprising his vocal parts from the studio version. Antonoff was visibly moved at the song’s ...
Bruce Springsteen Confirms 2023 U.S. Tour Dates With E Street Band
As expected, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band will tour the United States in early 2023, beginning Feb. 1 in Tampa, Fla., and wrapping April 14 in Newark, N.J. A previously announced summer European tour will follow, starting April 28 in Barcelona, and a to-be-announced second North American leg will get underway in August. Tickets for the 2023 U.S. shows begin going on sale July 20, and show-specific details can be found on Springsteen’s Web site. These will be the group’s first tour dates since February 2017. Of late, Springsteen has made two surprise appearances at Paul McCartney shows in New Jersey and at the Glastonbury Festival in the U.K., performing his own “Glory Days” and The Beatles’ “I Wanna Be Your Man” and “The End.” Springsteen and the E Street Band’s latest album,&nb...
Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen Join Paul McCartney During Glastonbury Set
In Saturday’s main event at Glastonbury, Paul McCartney had a couple of major surprises for those who attended the festival English countryside. First up: Dave Grohl. In what is his first public appearance onstage since his Foo Fighters bandmate Taylor Hawkins died in March, Grohl joined McCartney on the Pyramid Stage for a garage rock version of The Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” and Wings’ “Band on the Run.” Before Grohl popped up, McCartney told the crowd that “This guy flew in specially to do this.” Following the songs, according to the BBC, Grohl said “but I swear, I would never miss being here with you right here, right now.” “We love you Dave,” McCartney said in response. Last October, McCartney inducted the Foo Fighters into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Following Grohl’s su...
