Springsteen to Release Long-Rumored Stash: 74 Unheard Songs

The day serious Bruce Springsteen fans have been anticipating for decades—the release of scores of recordings thought to be stashed somewhere deep in his vault—will arrive on June 27. That's when Tracks II: The Lost Albums will be available, Springsteen has announced. The seven albums included 74 songs never publicly heard and eight others in versions not released, Pitchfork reports. Springsteen had confirmed that some of the music existed, such as a full-band Nebraska recorded in the early 1980s, but fans couldn't be sure how much of the trove lived only in rumor and hope.

The first Tracks was released in 1998 and got fans thinking that—given Springsteen's prolific writing and home recording setups—there had to be more music around. That release was a collection of songs, not Springsteen's more typical thematic album. On the other hand, "The Lost Albums were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released," he said in a statement Thursday, per the Hollywood Reporter. Rolling Stone describes the collection as "a fascinating alternate history of Springsteen's career over the past 35 years." The albums include:

• LA Garage Sessions '83: The 18 tracks were recorded after Springsteen made Nebraska and before he recorded Born in the USA.
• Streets of Philadelphia Sessions: The 1993 recording has been known among aficionados as the "Drum Loop" album.
• Somewhere North of Nashville: The countryish album was recorded with the help of the E Street Band in 1995, soon after the band's reunion captured in the film Blood Brothers.
• Inyo: Officially described as cinematic border tales, Springsteen made this while on a solo tour promoting The Ghost of Tim Joad between 1995 and 1997.
• Perfect World: This release is the only one of the seven "that wasn't initially conceived as an album," Springsteen said. It includes songs he wrote with Joe Grushecky throughout the 1990s and early 2000s and other unreleased songs of that period. One of the songs, "Rain in the River," can be heard here.
• Faithless: This was recorded in 2005 and '06 for a movie soundtrack project that was never completed.
• Twilight Hours: Basically a companion to Western Stars, it was recorded in 2018. The official description is "orchestra-driven mid-century noir."

Pitchfork has the track listings here. (More Bruce Springsteen stories.)