Tracks II: The Lost Albums
Tracks II: The Lost Albums Album ∙ Rock ∙ 2025 Bruce Springsteen History gets harder and harder to make, but never in the long, weird history of popular music has there been an analogue for this. Doorstop box sets with troves of fan-coveted rarities are de rigueur for any legacy artist, very much including Bruce Springsteen, whose 1998 compilation Tracks dutifully assembled 66 of these—four and a half hours of alternate history to one of rock’s most vaunted narratives. Twenty-seven years later, its nominal sequel is composed of seven full and distinct stand-alone albums recorded between 1983 and 2018, largely unknown to even the most devout Springsteen cryptographers. That something so auspicious and audacious bears the modest title Tracks II is the slyest joke of his career. Individually, these albums demonstrate both logical extensions of his classic songwriting that manage to meet that impossible standard, as well as tantalizing, disciplined, and fully realize...
