What was Bruce Springsteen’s first movie soundtrack?
A lot of people don’t appreciate just how much the music matters in a film, such that without a good soundtrack, a motion picture can often fall flat, or it could be interpreted in a much different way.
The line between different cinematic themes is incredibly thin, wherein with a few small tweaks, a lot of your favourite horrors and comedies could quite easily go the other way. With a slightly different soundtrack, the scariest film you’ve ever seen can become utterly hilarious, and a feature which you’re used to laughing at could border on terrifying.
Take a solid film like The Truman Show, for example, which, despite its satirical premise, people still view as a comedy classic, thanks to the jovial notes that are in it help to play into the comedic element of the film as Jim Carrey steadily works out that everyone around him might be an actor, and he is in a fictional world. But change that sound to something slightly more harrowing, and you have a scary film about a man realising his entire life has been a lie, and thus, it’s important filmmakers really nail their soundtrack.
And really, there is no better way to ensure the music in a film is engaging than by asking popular artists to help out, for if these artists are exceptional enough to capture the hearts of audiences around the world, then surely they can do the same in a cinema; however, putting together a soundtrack is a bit harder than it seems.
AC/DC were asked to put together the soundtrack for Stephen King’s (questionable) movie Maximum Overdrive. Having the band’s hard rock sound on a film that centres on machines coming to life and killing the human race seems like an open goal, but Brian Johnson admitted it was tricky trying to write music for specific moments in a film rather than just having free rein to do what they want.
“It was an interesting thing,” said lead singer Johnson, “It was the first time I’ve been involved in anything like that. The lads said it was a bit like movie-making because they had to be watching the clips.” Guitarist Angus Young agreed, chiming in, “It certainly was different for us to work with film”.
If there is one artist you would think could merge music and narrative effectively, it would be Bruce Springsteen, whose music already tells the listener stories, and so having him write soundtracks makes perfect sense. His songs have been used in plenty of great films, such as Long Shot, Wise Guys, and Guardians of the Galaxy, but what was the first film soundtrack ‘The Boss’ ever actually wrote?
So, what was Bruce Springsteen’s first movie soundtrack?
As is the case with any creative industry, the world of cinema can be pretty cruel. A lot of projects fall through, albums go unheard, films go unseen, and that’s exactly what happened with the first soundtrack that Springsteen ever wrote. In 2005, he put together a soundtrack for a movie called Faithless, but it was never released, and the songs went unheard until 2025, when they were released on Tracks II: The Lost Albums.
“It was a western that deals with some spiritual issues,” said Springsteen during an interview with Uncut magazine, “I was in Florida with my daughter, and in the very brief period of a couple of weeks I wrote basically all the songs.”
