Tracks (1998)
Disc One
1. Mary Queen of Arkansas
2. It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
3. Growin' Up
4. Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street
5. Bishop Danced
6. Santa Ana
7. Seaside Bar Song
8. Zero and Blind Terry
9. Linda Let Me Be the One
10.Thundercrack
11.Rendezvous
12.Give the Girl a Kiss
13.Iceman
14.Bring on the Night
15.So Young and So in Love
16.Hearts of Stone
17.Don't Look Back
Disc Two
1. Restless Nights
2. A Good Man is Hard to Find
3. Roulette
4. Doll House
5. Where the Bands ARe
6. Loose Ends
7. Living on the Edge of the world
8. Wages of Sin
9. Take 'Em as They Come
10.Be True
11.Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own
12.I Wanna Be with You
13.Mary Lou
14.Stolen Car
15.Born in the U.S.A.
16.Johnny Bye Bye
17.Shut Out the Light
Disc Three
1. Cynthia
2. My Love Will Not Let You Down
3. This Hard Land
4. Frankie
5. T.V. Movie
6. Stand On It
7. Lion's Den
8. Car Wash
9. Rockaway the Days
10.Brothers Under the Bridge ('83)
11.Man at the Top
12.Pink Cadillac
13.Two for the Road
14.Janey, Don't You Lose Heart
15.When You Need Me
16.The Wish
17.The Honeymooners
18.Lucky Man
Disc Four
1. Leavin' Train
2. Seven Angels
3. Gave it a Name
4. Sad Eyes
5. My Lover Man
6. Over the Rise
7. When the Lights Go Out
8. Loose Change
9. Trouble in Paradise
10.Happy
11.Part Man, Part Monkey
12.Goin' Cali
13.Back in Your Arms
14.Brothers Under the Bridge
There are box sets, and then there is Tracks. Where most retrospective collections serve as museums of musical excess—stuffed with alternate takes and half-formed ideas—Springsteen’s Tracks functions more like an overdue revelation. At four discs and 66 songs, it is an astonishing admission: that some of his finest work never even made the final cut.
Whereas many artists have to dig deep into the dregs to fill a deluxe edition, Springsteen appears to have withheld songs that would form the backbone of another artist’s greatest hits. The release of this material, much of it pristine and previously unheard, does not feel like an indulgence—it feels like justice.
This isn’t a scrapbook of curiosities, or a meandering list of sonic dead ends. No, Tracks reveals the singularity of Springsteen’s problem: not a lack of inspiration, but too much of it. These songs, left behind not due to quality but rather cohesion, point to a meticulous curator. As Springsteen himself notes in the liner materials, the exclusion of a song had more to do with thematic or emotional incongruity than with technical deficiency. The album as a narrative whole took precedence over isolated brilliance.
Take Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart, recorded during the Born in the U.S.A. sessions. By any critical standard, it belongs among the classics on that album and of that era. And yet, tonally, it didn’t fit the sonic muscle of the rest of the album. So it sat, gathering dust—until now.
The chronological arrangement of Tracks offers a rare insight into Springsteen’s evolving craft and the shifting shape of the E Street Band’s sound. What is particularly striking is the quality of the material from the period often dismissed as Springsteen’s fallow years—namely, the Human Touch / Lucky Town phase. Astonishingly, the fourth disc, composed of these sessions, may be the strongest of the set. It poses a compelling question: what kind of records might those albums have been, had they drawn from this deeper, richer vein?
There are curios, of course. Pink Cadillac is rendered in a way that closely mirrors Aretha Franklin’s later interpretation—a mutual triumph of spirit and swagger. But it’s the reimagined Born in the U.S.A. that delivers the greatest shock: stripped-down, severe, and contemplative. This is no stadium anthem. This version should have been placed squarely on Nebraska, where its lyrical grimness and skeletal presentation would never have been mistaken for flag-waving bravado.
Across all four discs, there is remarkably little filler. This is not a case of completist generosity—these songs were simply too good to stay buried. Each listener will no doubt choose their personal touchstones, but the overall standard rarely falters.
What Tracks ultimately exposes is not just the hidden breadth of Springsteen’s songwriting, but the extent of his editorial sacrifice. To know that this much brilliance remained unheard for so long is a kind of absurdity. But it’s also a mark of the artist’s integrity. Lesser musicians release everything. Springsteen releases only what fits. That we now have Tracks is both a gift and a promise—there may yet be more where this came from.
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