Springsteen on Broadway is a
soundtrack album by American
rock singer-songwriter
Bruce Springsteen.
It features the complete audio of
Springsteen's solo Broadway performance at the
Walter Kerr Theatre in New York, recorded
live on July 17 and July 18, 2018, and filmed for
Netflix.
The album was released on December 14, 2018, by
Columbia Records.
After release,
Springsteen on Broadway impacted the top 10 of
record charts in more than 10 countries, including Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
In the United States, it reached number 11 on the
Billboard 200.
A widespread critical success, the album was praised for examining Springsteen's recording persona and an autobiographical dimension recalling the musician's 2016 autobiography
Born to Run.
Springsteen on Broadway was met with widespread critical acclaim. At
Metacritic, which assigns a
normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an
average score of 87, based on 15 reviews.
Reviewing for
The Daily Telegraph in December 2018,
Neil McCormick said "
Springsteen on Broadway may not have the musical expanse of his work with the
E Street Band, but it is still as powerful as any album he has ever made", especially applauding its autobiographical dimension, which he compared to Springsteen's 2016 autobiography
Born to Run.
McCormick also highlighted Springsteen's humor and instincts as an onstage
anecdotist.
Alexis Petridis of
The Guardian said listeners of the album will learn that Springsteen's recording persona is "as much a contrived character" as
David Bowie's
Ziggy Stardust character. Overall, he found that this "cocktail of homespun wisdom, frankness and blatant yarn-spinning is genuinely enthralling, a portrait of the rock star as a complex, conflicted 69-year-old man."
In hailing the performance as "a new type of rock show",
Record Collector magazine's Jamie Atkins felt Springsteen is the only musician of his pedigree to have "the connection with their audience, the storytelling
nous, the humour and
pathos".
In
Rolling Stone,
Will Hermes described it as "by turns
audiobook,
podcast, and
live album, and at its most potent when it becomes a hybrid of the three", while
Kitty Empire regarded it as being "located somewhere between a
TED talk, an episode of
VH1's Storytellers and a confessional ... a hugely nourishing listen". Despite having never been "big on extended spoken-word material or solo-acoustic remakes of exalted
songbooks",
Robert Christgau said in his column for
Vice that he was impressed by performance. In appraising the record as a whole, he said:
| “ | The Springsteen this most recalls isn't like any earlier album but the 2016 autobiography he called Born to Run for better reasons than you might imagine. Like that fast-reading 508-pager, its aim is to simultaneously depict and demythologize the Jersey shore and poke major holes in an authenticity it reconceives at a truer level of complexity |
Disc one
1. "Growin' Up (Introduction)" - 2:04
2. "Growin' Up" - 11:59
3. "My Hometown (Introduction Part 1)" - 3:44
4. "My Hometown (Introduction Part 2)" - 3:36
5. "My Hometown" - 3:59
6. "My Father's House (Introduction)" - 4:28
7. "My Father's House" - 6:22
8. "The Wish (Introduction)" - 6:09
9. "The Wish" - 4:24
10. "Thunder Road (Introduction)" - 3:19
11. "Thunder Road" - 5:28
12. "The Promised Land (Introduction Part 1)" - 3:35
13. "The Promised Land (Introduction Part 2)" - 3:34
14. "The Promised Land (Introduction Part 3)" - 4:15
15. "The Promised Land" - 3:59
Disc two
1. "Born In the U.S.A. (Introduction Part 1)" - 4:16
2. "Born In the U.S.A. (Introduction Part 2)" - 3:46
3. "Born in the U.S.A." - 4:44
4. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (Introduction)" - 1:10
5. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" - 7:56
6. "Tougher Than the Rest (Introduction)" - 1:25
7. "Tougher Than the Rest" (w/ Patti Scialfa) - 4:29
8. "Brilliant Disguise (Introduction)" - 1:43
9. "Brilliant Disguise" (w/ Patti Scialfa) - 4:47
10. "Long Time Comin' (Introduction)" - 3:08
11. "Long Time Comin'" - 3:54
12. "The Ghost of Tom Joad (Introduction)" - 3:27
13. "The Ghost of Tom Joad" - 4:36
14. "The Rising" - 4:33
15. "Dancing In the Dark (Introduction)" - 2:47
16. "Dancing In the Dark" - 4:10
17. "Land of Hope and Dreams" - 3:57
18. "Born to Run (Introduction Part 1)" - 3:54
19. "Born to Run (Introduction Part 2)" - 3:41
20. "Born to Run" - 5:08
All tracks are written by Bruce Springsteen.
Personnel
- Greg Allen – Engineer
- Kevin Buell – Guitar Technician
- Barbara Carr – Associate Producer
- Bob Clearmountain – Mixing
- Danny Clinch – Photography
- John Cooper – Engineer
- Rob Demartin – Photography
- Brandon Duncan – Assistant
- Michelle Holme – Art Direction, Design
- Alexander Hyde – Associate Producer
- Jon Landau – Producer
- Rob Lebret – Coordination
- Bob Ludwig – Mastering
- Mike Miccio – Piano Technician
- Mary O'Brien – Assistant
- Prez Powerz – Photography
- Brian Roman – Sound Design
- Sergio Ruelas Jr. – Music Editor
- Patti Scialfa – Guitar, Vocals
- Chris Sloan – Sound Production
- Bruce Springsteen – Composer, Guitar, Harmonica, Piano, Primary Artist, Vocals
- George Travis – Producer
- Thom Zimny – Director, Producer
Notes
Released: December 14, 2018
Recorded: July 17–18, 2018
Genre: Rock
Length: 145:43
Label - Columbia Records
