Springsteen on Broadway (album)

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 18, 2018, and filmed for Netflix. The album was released on December 14, 2018, by Columbia Records.[1]

Springsteen on Broadway
Soundtrack album / live album by
Bruce Springsteen
ReleasedDecember 14, 2018
RecordedJuly 17–18, 2018
GenreRock
Length145:43
LabelColumbia
ProducerBruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen chronology
Chapter and Verse
(2016)		 Springsteen on Broadway
(2018)		 Western Stars
(2019)

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.

Critical reception
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic87/100[2]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[3]
Financial Times[4]
The Guardian[5]
The Independent[6]
The Irish Times[7]
The Observer[8]
Pitchfork8/10[9]
Rolling Stone[10]
Uncut9/10[11]
Vice (Expert Witness)A[12]

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.[1]

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.[13] 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."[5]

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".[14] 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",[10] 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".[8] 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.[12] 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.[12]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Bruce Springsteen

Disc one
No.TitleLength
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
No.TitleLength
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
Total length:145:43

Personnel

Credits adapted from the album's liner notes.[15]

Technical personnel

  • Bruce Springsteen – production
  • John Cooper, Greg Allen – recording
  • Bob Clearmountain – mixing
  • Sergio Ruelas Jr. – music editor
  • Brandon Duncan – associate music editor
  • Bob Ludwig – mastering
  • Brian Ronan – sound design
  • Brett Dicus – technical manager
  • Rob Lebret – technical coordinator
  • Mary O'Brien – personal assistant to the Springsteens
  • Benjamin Travis – general manager
  • Kevin Buell – guitar technician
  • John Cooper – house mixer
  • Dan Lee – teleprompter
  • Shannon Slaton – deck audio, monitors mixer
  • Mike Tracy – associate sound designer
  • Chris Sloan – production sound
  • Mike Miccio – piano technician
  • Michelle Holme – art direction, design
  • Danny Clinch, Rob Demartin, Prez Powerz – photography

Charts

Certifications
Region CertificationCertified units/sales
Italy (FIMI)[43] Gold 25,000‡
United Kingdom (BPI)[44] Silver 60,000‡

‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

References
  1. "Springsteen on Broadway". Metacritic. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  2. "Springsteen on Broadway by Bruce Springsteen". Metacritic. Retrieved September 9, 2021.
  3. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2018). "Springsteen on Broadway". AllMusic. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  4. Hunter-Tilney, Ludovic (December 14, 2018). "Bruce Springsteen: Springsteen on Broadway — an affecting personal dimension". Financial Times. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  5. Petridis, Alexis (December 7, 2018). "Bruce Springsteen: Springsteen on Broadway review – magical myth-busting with the Boss". The Guardian. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  6. Polard, Alexandra (December 14, 2018). "Bruce Springsteen on Broadway, album review: 150 minutes of theatrical magnetism". The Independent. Archived from the original on May 24, 2022. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  7. Breen, Joe (December 14, 2018). "Springsteen on Broadway album review: Stories of hurting and healing". The Irish Times. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  8. Empire, Kitty (December 15, 2018). "Bruce Springsteen: Springsteen on Broadway; Paul McCartney at Liverpool Echo Arena – reviews". The Observer. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  9. Rose, Caryn (December 14, 2018). "Bruce Springsteen: Springsteen on Broadway". Pitchfork. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  10. Hermes, Will (December 13, 2018). "'Springsteen on Broadway' Is the Realest Bruce We've Ever Seen". Rolling Stone. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  11. Watts, Peter (February 2018). "Springsteen on Broadway". Uncut. p. 18.
  12. Christgau, Robert (May 3, 2019). "Robert Christgau Reviews 'Springsteen on Broadway'". Vice. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  13. McCormick, Neil (December 7, 2018). "Bruce Springsteen, Springsteen on Broadway, review: that's why they call him the Boss". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  14. Atkins, Jamie (January 2019). "Springsteen on Broadway". Record Collector. No. 488. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  15. Springsteen on Broadway (liner notes). Bruce Springsteen. Columbia Records. 2018. 19075904362.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
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