Bruce Springsteen on Thursday announced the long-awaited sequel to his critically acclaimed 1998 Tracks box set, which will contain 83 songs, the vast majority of them previously unreleased.
The set comprises what Springsteen says are seven “lost” albums.
“The Lost Albums are records that were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,” Springsteen, 75, said in a short video clip posted to the social media platforms. “For one reason or another, something I felt was missing from some of them, or they just didn’t feel complete at the time.”
Springsteen said he was able to revisit the recordings in the “vault” during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tracks II: The Lost Albums arrives in various CD and LP formats on June 27, with some editions including a 100-page hardcover book.
Springsteen first teased the records on Wednesday morning. A short video posted to his Instagram account featured text that read, “What was lost has been found.”
Songs from sessions months before Born in the U.S.A.
The set starts with sessions from 1983 in Los Angeles that have been widely bootlegged. Included are an alternate take of My Hometown, the seventh single from his smash 1984 album, Born in the U.S.A., as well as a run through Johnny Bye-Bye, which was first heard as a B-side to I’m on Fire.
The bulk of the material is believed to be from the 1990s, an unusual decade in Springsteen’s career in which he released three studio albums, and none after 1995’s sparse and largely solo effort, The Ghost of Tom Joad.
In the last year of the ’90s, Springsteen reunited with the E Street Band, after a hiatus of more than a decade.
“I often read about myself in the ’90s as having some lost period or something,” Springsteen said in the social clip previewing the release.
“Not really — I was working the whole time,” added Springsteen, who has a home studio at his residence in Monmouth, N.J.
Other sections of the box set promise orchestra-driven and country-tinged material, as well as a disc entitled the Streets of Philadelphia sessions, named after Springsteen’s Oscar-winning song from the 1993 movie of the same name.
A more conventional rock track from the set, Raised on the River, was released to streaming platforms on Thursday.
It will be the first set of original Springsteen material to see the light of day since 2020’s Letter to You. In 2022, he released Only the Strong Survive, a collection of covers of soul classics.
Springsteen and the E Street band played their last tour show on Nov. 22 in Vancouver. The group will embark on a tour of Europe and the U.K., beginning May 17 in Manchester, England, and concluding on July 3 in Milan, Italy.
Also on Thursday, the trailer for the upcoming Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere was previewed to audiences at Cinemacom in Las Vegas.
The film stars Jeremy Allen White from the FX show The Bear as Springsteen, and is to be released later this year.
