On April Fool’s Day, it’s best to ignore any supposed news you read online that can’t be 100 percent verified. That’s why it may be tempting to disregard a post on Bruce Springsteen‘s Instagram page that displays a Thrill Hill Recording log sheet dated April 3 that reads “What Was Lost Has Now Been Found.” But the date suggests this is a tease for an announcement coming in two days, and this doesn’t feel like a lame April Fool’s Day bit.
It’s impossible to say for sure what they’re teasing, but our best bet is that this is the Tracks 2 box set we’ve been hearing about for years. In December 2024, his team hinted at this in a press release summing up Springsteen’s year: “Upcoming releases in 2025 will include a look back at Springsteen’s storied recording career, featuring never-before-heard material.”
The original Tracks in 1998 was a four-disc box featuring unreleased music from the first 25 years of his career. But it only scratched the surface of the contents of the Springsteen vault. And in 2022, we asked Springsteen about the rumored Tracks 2.
“I have a box set of five unreleased albums that are basically post-1988,” he said. “People have always wondered … People look at my work in the Nineties, and they go, ‘The Nineties wasn’t a great decade for Bruce. He was kind of doing this, and he wasn’t in the E Street Band …’ I actually made a lot of music during that period of time. I actually made albums. For one reason or another, the timing wasn’t right or whatever, I didn’t put them out.”
To be clear, the exact plans for Tracks 2 could have changed over the past few years. It’s also possible the tease today has nothing to do with Tracks 2. We’ll have to wait another two days to know for sure.
We do know that the rest of the year will be a busy time for Springsteen. He kicks off an extensive European stadium tour May 14 in Manchester, England. It wraps up July 3 in Milan, Italy. And before the end of the year, the movie Deliver Me From Nowhere — starring The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen and Succession‘s Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau – is slated to arrive in theaters. It focuses on the creation of his 1982 LP Nebraska.
Springsteen was spotted on the set nearly every day of shooting. That means he’s likely to be involved with the promotion as well. Could that mean at least one show where he finally plays Nebraska straight through? Will he finally release the complete electric Nebraska sessions? Much like this possible Tracks 2 announcement, we just can’t say for sure.
From Rolling Stone US
