The day Bruce Springsteen set out to make the album he would be remembered for: “The greatest rock record”
What makes a record so big? Is it a sprawling tracklist that makes it an endurance epic, or is it a crunching orchestral arrangement that envelopes you upon listening? For Bruce Springsteen and Born To Run, it was neither. At only eight songs long, Springsteen made it as grandiose as any other epic, but through nothing more than genuine heart.
For great musicians, there’s a fine balance between insecurity and confidence. Particularly when it comes to making a record, your vulnerabilities and self-doubt should be poured into your art, in a bid to create something genuinely authentic and heartfelt. But that humility has to be soon swept aside, in order for it to be delivered with unfiltered confidence and self-assurance, so as to endear it to the listeners.
In fact, when Far Out spoke to The Murder Capital this year, they put it best, “You do have to believe you’re in the best band, to keep going as a band”. It’s the dangling carrot of greatness that keeps art an interesting pursuit for musicians, the elusive idea of creating that perfect record. And of course, we all know, if anything close to perfection is achieved, then it will never really be clear because of the subjectivity. But that’s the idea that keeps us fans fed, with a conveyor belt of brilliant music.
There are perhaps a handful of albums in history that many fans could agree hit the mark of greatness. Many of them were released in the 1970s, in particular, from the likes of Marvin Gaye, Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac, to name but a few. And so to deliver something breakthrough in a decade of saturated greatness, something truly unique was required. With Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen delivered it. But not necessarily with the tricks of Pink Floyd and the drama of Fleetwood Mac. But with heart, honest arrangement and painfully vivid storytelling.
When Springsteen stood at the foot of the mountain, he knew if he conquered it, he would have his opus. He said, “I wanted to make the greatest rock record that I’d ever heard, and I wanted it to sound enormous and I wanted it to grab you by your throat and insist that you take that ride, insist that you pay attention, not to just the music, but just to life, to feeling alive, to being alive.”
Much like 2025, the year of Born To Run’s release, 1975 was a fractured time in society. Certain parts of the world were in economic ruins while the brutal and bloody Vietnam War had just come to a pitiful end for America, leaving their communities ripped apart and traumatised.
This album became an immersive escape for that very society, while creating something that tapped into their psyche and conscience in a way that allowed them to make sense of their surrounding simultaneously. His lyrics grab you by the throat while his swirling and grandiose textural instrumentation takes you on that ride he so wished to enjoy. It was a record that set out exactly what he aimed to achieve in a time period where it felt more impossible than ever: to feel alive.
