Bruce Springsteen will release a project called “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” the singer announced on social media Wednesday morning. No further information was provided, but the first volume of “Tracks” was 4-CD, 66-song collection of unreleased material from across his career that was issued in 1998.
The video accompanying the announcement, which is soundtracked by instrumental music, shows studio paperwork dated from 1993 (the session for his Oscar-winning song “Streets of Philadelphia”) and 1997 and includes the tagline, “What was lost has now been found.” It also includes the date April 3rd, 2025 — tomorrow — but it’s unclear whether the album, or merely more information, will be unveiled on that day.
“TRACKS II: THE LOST ALBUMS are seven unreleased Bruce Springsteen albums recorded between 1983-2018. With 82 new songs, The Lost Albums completes chapters of Springsteen’s extensive trajectory, while offering a valuable insight into his life and work as an artist. ‘The Lost Albums” were complete records, some of them included until they were mixed and not published’, says Springsteen. ‘I’m glad that you finally have the opportunity to listen to them. I hope you enjoy them.’
From the lo-fi exploration of LA Garage Sessions ’83, which serves as a crucial link between “Nebraska” and “Born in the U.S.A.”, to the drum and synthesizer sounds of Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, The Lost Albums offers a context without precedent for Springsteen’s 35 prolific years of composition and home recording. “The ability to record at home whenever I wanted allowed me to go in a wide variety of different musical directions,” Springsteen explained. Throughout the album, this sonic experiment takes the form of film soundtracks (for a film that is never seen) in “Faithless”, country combos with pedal steel in Somewhere North of Nashville, frontier stories richly woven in Inyo, mid-sixth-century noir music with orchestra in Twilight Hours and E Street’s favourite rock in “Perfect World“. “The Lost Albums” are available in a limited edition of a nine LP and seven CDs, including the original packaging of each unreleased album, with a hardcover book bound on a 100-page canvas with photos from a few common archives, notes on each lost album by essayist Erik Flannigan and a personal introduction about Springsteen’s own project.”
Springsteen, who launches a European tour next month, teased the album earlier in the week, and his fan network immediately sprung into action, some not only accurately guessing what the project is, but also what might be on it.
Not surprisingly, the most popular guess was the full-band version of his “Nebraska” album, which Springsteen recorded but then abandoned in 1981 and ’82, electing instead to release his solo demos, as he felt they had a spirit and rawness that the band didn’t or couldn’t capture. With the biopic of the making of that album — “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” starring Jeremy Allen White — slated for release later this year, it seems likely that at least some of those songs will be on the collection.
Springsteen has released multiple archival collections since the first “Tracks” dropped nearly 27 years ago, including expanded anniversary editions of his classic albums “Born to Run,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “The River,” as well as dozens of live recordings available on his website.
The first volume of “Tracks” spanned 1972-1995 but featured just five post-1990 recordings, so it seems likely that the bulk of the material from this new edition will be from the past 30 years. However, Vol. 1 featured just one “Nebraska” outtake, a glaring omission that has tantalized fans for decades.
Springsteen said in 2017, “We’ve made many more records than we released. Why didn’t we release those records? I didn’t think they were essential. I might have thought they were good, I might have had fun making them, and we’ve released plenty of that music [on archival collections over the years]. But over my entire work life, I felt like I released what was essential at a certain moment, and what I got in return was a very sharp definition of who I was, what I want to do, what I was singing about. And I still basically judge what I’m doing by the same set of rules.”
A 20-track, single CD / 2LP highlights release called “Selections From The Lost Albums Track” will also be available. “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” will be released by Sony on 27th June 2025.
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