- Acclaimed Flop: His first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, were praised by critics on release and are still beloved by fans, but didn't even make the charts in their initial releases. They only started selling after his third album Born to Run broke through commercially.
- Based on a Dream: "Surprise, Surprise" from Working on a Dream was created this way.
- Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Bruce Springsteen's manager Jon Landau is often quoted as saying "I saw rock n' roll's future" or "I saw the future of rock n' roll" with Springsteen being the object of his praise as a savior of rock. The actual quote:"I saw my rock 'n' roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."note
- Breakthrough Hit: "Born to Run", as his first Top 40 hit. "Hungry Heart" counts as a later example as it was his first Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching No. 5. It would be his biggest hit until "Dancing in the Dark".
- Breakaway Pop Hit: Subverted with "Streets of Philadelphia", a very well known and well received song, which won Springsteen an Oscar, in addition to being the song for the (also well received) movie Philadelphia.
- Chart Displacement: Among his top 20 charters on Billboard are "Fade Away" and a live cover of "War" - by no means among his most popular material - and "Tunnel of Love", "One Step Up" and "Better Days" - well-known, but not timeless classics. Meanwhile, "Born to Run", which is arguably his Signature Song, stalled at #23, "Badlands" stalled at #42, and "Thunder Road" wasn't even released as a single.
- The phenomenon also happens on albums themselves. Darkness on the Edge of Town has as its highest charting hit "Prove It All Night" (#33) - well-known, but not as much as the classic "Badlands" (#42) or even "The Promised Land" (did not chart). The River is a downplayed example - the classic "Hungry Heart" (#5) was Springsteen's fist top 10 hit, but the top 20 "Fade Away" is largely forgotten, while the Title Track, the album's major classic along with "Hungry Heart", wasn't even released as a single in the US (though it was a hit in several European countries).
- Corpsing: He cracks up on the live version of "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" when one of his bandmates starts doing Santa's "ho-ho-ho" laughter. It's endearing as heck.
- Creator Backlash:
- He looks back at the song "57 Channels" as a failed attempt at hipness and irony.
- While he doesn't hate the two albums themselves, he acknowledges that Human Touch and Lucky Town were not well received by the broader public, making reference to them as containing "happy songs" in his Rock'N'Roll Hall of Fame induction speech. That said, from those albums he seems to like "Human Touch" and "Better Days", since he chose them for his 1995 Greatest Hits Album, and also "If I Should Fall Behind", which he often played in concerts and is also a fan favorite though it flopped as a single.
- Creator Breakdown: His 1987 album ''Tunnel Of Love" chronicles the falling apart of his first marriage to actress Julianne Phillips.
- Creator Couple: Bruce and Patti Scialfa. Scialfa is a member of the E Street Band as well as a solo artist in her own right.
- Creator's Favorite Episode:
- In an interview with Stephen Colbert, he listed five songs as his favorites: "Born To Run", "The Rising", "Thunder Road", "Nebraska", and "Racing In The Street". Though it was a choice made on the moment, and he easily has many favorites; indeed, if you consider that on his top 5 he listed at the moment, he had also mentioned "Badlands" and "Jungleland" among the candidates...
- While he has acknowledged the importance of different albums on his career and development, he singled out Nebraska, considering it his most definitive album and the album he wanted to represent him.
- Doing It for the Art: A major concern for Springsteen as he crafted several thematically-focused albums. He would often leave off many great hit songs if they didn't fit the thematic focus of the record or had the potential to overshadow the album.
- Draft Dodging: Springsteen has said that he did "everything he could" to avoid being sent to Vietnam. Subverted in that he was ultimately rejected due to legitimate injuries he had sustained in a motorcycle accident.
- Friendship on the Set: Springsteen developed a close friendship with Sting during their 1988 Human Rights Amnesty tour alongside other headliners. They've since taken family vacations together, and each performed for the other's Kennedy Center Honors show.
- Genre Popularizer: For Heartland Rock as its most commercially successful act, helping lead the way for other artists both before and after him.
- Hire the Critic: Jon Landau was a a mix of this and Promoted Fanboy. He was originally a rock critic who praised Springsteen's performance and called him "Rock N' Roll Future". Ironically, it was the praise that seemed to place a heavy burden on the aspiring artist. Springsteen noticed that Landau had more experience and insight in making records than he did, so he hired him as a producer and later manager.
- Hitless Hit Album: Nebraska didn't have a single released from it but still made the Top 10 in many countries. The popular "Atlantic City", however, which got enough radio airplay in America to make the Top 10 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, is now retroactively considered the album's "hit" ("Open All Night" and "Johnny 99" also made the Mainstream Rock chart, though they're less remembered).
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: Springsteen's reputation for long, high-energy concerts with a wide variety of setlists has kept bootlegs in demand for almost 50 years. Although the Live Archive series
is significantly closing the gap, there are dozens of very highly-regarded shows that haven't yet gotten an official release due to time and format constraints. - Magnum Opus Dissonance: In Bruce's opinion, Nebraska contained some of his strongest writing while he was more mixed about Born in the U.S.A. which was his most commercially successful album. Over the years however, Nebraska has received more and more appreciation as one of Bruce's strongest albums.
- Mid-Development Genre Shift: Nebraska was intended to be a full-band album, and many songs did get recorded with the E Street Band before Springsteen decided he preferred the bare-bones acoustic demo tapes. Some of these electric outtakes were later released on Born in the U.S.A., including the now iconic title track.
- The Pete Best: A few examples:
- David Sancious was the E Street Band's original keyboardist. He played on the first two albums along with the Title Track of Born to Run before starting his solo career as a Jazz Fusion artist. He was replaced by Roy Bittan who became a key component in developing the E Street Band's sound. In a slight aversion, Sancious has also achieved relative prominence as a session and touring musician for other big artists, and made guest appearances on the later Springsteen albums Human Touch and Western Stars.
- The E Street Band's original drummer was Vini Lopez who played on the first two albums before being fired. Ernest Carter played on the iconic Title Track of Born to Run before leaving with David Sancious. It was only afterwards that the band settled on their third and most well-known drummer Max Weinberg.
- Bill Chinnock was the frontman of a band that featured Vini Lopez and Danny Federici. Chinnock had previously played with several members of the future E Street Band before Bruce arrived which makes him this to Bruce himself.
- Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Did Robert De Niro borrow the famous "you talkin' to me" Taxi Driver line from Springsteen after seeing one of his shows in 1975? Recordings show Springsteen was using the line on stage around the time the film wrapped, but it's unknown if he did earlier on when de Niro saw him. For the record, director Martin Scorsese believes it could be true.
- Preemptive "Shut Up": The solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad tour has been nicknamed the "Shut the Fuck Up Tour" due to Springsteen opening concerts in this way.
- Promoted Fanboy: Over the years, Springsteen has had the opportunity to perform onstage and collaborate with many of his biggest influences and heroes. These have ranged from Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, Sam Moore, Roy Orbison, John Fogerty, and many more.
- Rarely Performed Song: "Streets of Philadelphia", despite being among the artist's most popular songs, is kind of a Black Sheep Hit, being a synthesizer-driven Soft Rock ballad, and therefore is not particularly popular in concerts.
- Among his other popular hits, "Human Touch" has been performed quite sporadically, but a really straight example is "Secret Garden", with only 8 performances.
- The entire "Western Stars" qualifies, given that Bruce played all the songs live only once just before the release of the album.
- Technology Marches On: There are a lot more than just "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)" today.
- Throw It In!: During live shows, Springsteen will deviate from the set list and launch into a song without actually telling anyone else what the song is, fully expecting the band to keep up based on the opening chords he playsnote . Because of this, each member of the E Street Band has to know at least 200 songs by heart by the time rehearsals end, with this number approaching 500 by any tour's mid point.
- A long running tradition is the "sign request". Fans hold up pieces of card or signs with the name of a song they want to hear and Bruce will randomly grab one from the crowd or get it passed forward and the band will play it for the fan. Sometimes it's not even a Springsteen song - one memorable request was for "You Never Can Tell", originally by Chuck Berry. Since this is Bruce and the E-Street band we're talking about, they absolutely crushed it.
- A long running tradition is the "sign request". Fans hold up pieces of card or signs with the name of a song they want to hear and Bruce will randomly grab one from the crowd or get it passed forward and the band will play it for the fan. Sometimes it's not even a Springsteen song - one memorable request was for "You Never Can Tell", originally by Chuck Berry. Since this is Bruce and the E-Street band we're talking about, they absolutely crushed it
- Troubled Production:
- Born to Run is a legendary story. After two financially unsuccessful though critically acclaimed albums, the Boss' career almost came to an end when Columbia Records almost dropped him entirely. Springsteen promised a smash hit and Columbia gave him a deadline of six months to finish the album. At this point, Springsteen was running out of funds to pay The E Street Band, with many of its members thinking of walking out of the recording process. Recording ultimately took a year and a half, triple the time Columbia originally wanted. Springsteen got into dozens of arguments with his fellow musicians, as his musical ideas that were in his head were difficult to bring to fruition. The album ended up drastically over-budget, causing Columbia to almost consider dropping the album altogether. Song selection was so great that seven tracks were left on the cutting room floor just to keep the album from being overlong. Ultimately Born to Run turned into the Boss' greatest musical achievement, selling far more copies than Columbia was demanding. It thrust Springsteen into the limelight and even attracted attention to his prior albums, which are both also looked at as classics now.
- The arduous process of recording Darkness On The Edge Of Town is depicted and described in the film "The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town". Springsteen ended up recording around seventy songs for Darkness. This meant long hours in the studio and a long process to whittle down the album to the most essential songs. Springsteen and the E Street Band had a lot of trouble getting the sound they wanted in the studio due to the sterility and the studio padding. And many great songs were discarded if they did not fit the album. They either ended up on later albums or compilations such as Tracks.
- "Dancing In The Dark" was plagued by Bruce having no faith in music videos as an art form. He was uncomfortable doing it to begin with. An initial attempt had a crane flying by him shooting him, which malfunctioned. Bruce also demanded to be lit a certain way, which the directors refused saying they wanted to light him in a way that complemented his masculine features. After hours of failed takes, he fled the scene without telling anyone, causing mass panic on set. This first concept was scrapped and a second one was created. The second try went much more successfully, but it still had some issues. For one, nobody besides a few select people knew that Courteney Cox was a plant in the audience and some of the E-Street Band members were concerned when Bruce picked a seemingly random audience member to dance on stage with him. On top of that, this was done during an actual concert, confusing the audience when the same song was played 3 times when they had 2 failed takes. It remains Springsteen's most famous music video and helped him expand his audience to younger crowds.
- "Brilliant Disguise" doesn't seem like a music video that would be troubled, but somehow one little thing going wrong turned the production into a nightmare. The video is a single take shot in a kitchen. The original kitchen selected by director Meiert Avis was a private kitchen owned by a banker who was always away on business. The wife of the banker then called the director stating that he doesn't want anyone filming in the kitchen just as the director had already sent the filming trucks to the location. Scrambling and panicking, they ended up contacting the National Guard. They had an officer's house they were allowed to utilize with a nice kitchen. However, changing the filming location caused everything to have to be re-staged, causing stress for the crew. They also had issues getting he single shot to sync up with the music.
- What Could Have Been:
- When he considered going into acting, he was offered the lead role on the movie Light of Day.
- He declined to appear at Live Aid despite his huge global popularity in 1985. Bob Geldof had originally scheduled the event for the 6th of July, but moved the date to the 13th especially to accommodate him. He later expressed regret at turning down Geldof's invitation, stating that he "simply did not realize how big the whole thing was going to be" and regretted not performing an acoustic set.
- In the early The '70s, Bruce briefly left New Jersey to try and start his music career in California. At the time, he failed due to the sheer competitiveness and lack of interest. If he succeeded, we might not have had the same New Jersey-identified artist we have today.
- Written for My Kids: "Pony Boy" was an old song Springsteen vaguely remembered from his childhood and later rewrote as a lullaby for his son.
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