Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen, born September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, New Jersey, is an American singer, songwriter, and musician whose 21 studio albums span six decades. Known as “the Boss,” he has worked with the E Street Band since 1972, and the group features on most of his recordings. His early albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, arrived in 1973; worldwide popularity followed with Born to Run in 1975.

Springsteen built on that breakthrough with Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978 and The River in 1980, his first Billboard 200 number-one album. After the solo acoustic record Nebraska in 1982, he returned with the E Street Band for Born in the U.S.A. in 1984. It remains his most successful album and is among the best-selling albums of all time. He subsequently used mostly session musicians on Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992), and Lucky Town (1992), before reassembling the E Street Band for Greatest Hits in 1995.

The mid-1990s also brought the solo acoustic album The Ghost of Tom Joad and the Blood Brothers EP. Following the E Street Band reunion tour of 1999 and 2000, Springsteen released The Rising in 2002, dedicated to victims of the September 11 attacks. His later work has included the folk-oriented Devils & Dust and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, his first covers album, as well as Magic, Working on a Dream, Wrecking Ball, and High Hopes. He presented Springsteen on Broadway in 2017, 2018, and 2021, combining songs with stories from his 2016 autobiography.

Springsteen released the solo album Western Stars in 2019, followed by Letter to You with the E Street Band in 2020 and the solo covers album Only the Strong Survive in 2022. Letter to You made him the first artist to release a top-five album in six consecutive decades. In 2026, his politically charged single “Streets of Minneapolis” reached number one on the iTunes Top Songs chart. Having sold more than 140 million records worldwide, Springsteen has received 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award. He entered both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and later received the Kennedy Center Honors, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Medal of Arts.