Bruce Springsteen came by his nickname, “The Boss,” honestly. An early architect of the heartland rock movement, the New Jersey-born musician has released 21 albums across six decades. Now 76, Springsteen recently celebrated the release of Deliver Me From Nowhere, a biopic starring The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White that depicts the recording process of his seminal 1982 album Nebraska. While he is now one of the most recognizable figures in the music industry, it all had to start somewhere. On this day in 1980, Bruce Springsteen first claimed his spot atop what is now the Billboard 200 with his fifth studio album, The River.
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Bruce Springsteen Scrapped His Initial Album in Favor of ‘The River’
After wrapping up his Darkness Tour in January 1979, Bruce Springsteen was determined to showcase his E Street Band’s talents on the next record.
“I wanted to cut some music that felt very explosive,” the “Born in the USA” explained to biographer Peter Ames Carlin in 2012’s Bruce. “I wanted a record that combined the fun aspect of what the band did along with the story I was telling. Find a way to combine those things and create a bigger picture of what we did out in front of the people.”
Springsteen had initially tapped the album’s opener, “The Ties That Bind,” as the title track. However, after the album had been mixed and engineered, the 20-time Grammy Award winner felt it “wasn’t personal enough.” So, he shelved it and started from scratch on what would become The River. “This album seems much more personal to me,” he later said.
Exploring themes of family and commitment, Springsteen drew heavily from the works of Southern Gothic author Flannery O’Connor. “There was something in those stories of hers that I felt captured a certain part of the American character that I was interested in writing about,” he later said.
[RELATED: 5 Fascinating Tidbits About ‘The River’ by Bruce Springsteen]
He Intended the Lead Single for The Ramones
Released Oct. 17, 1980, The River became Bruce Springsteen’s fastest-selling album yet and his first-ever No. 1. Its lead single, “Hungry Heart,” also gave the Boss his first-ever Top 5 entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
Originally intending the song for the Ramones, Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, ultimately persuaded him to keep “Hungry Heart” for himself. The “Dancing in the Dark” crooner had previously gifted his more radio-friendly tunes to other artists like Patti Smith (“Because the Night”) and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (“Blinded By the Light.”)
“That’s good management, dammit,” Springsteen told Howard Stern in a December 2024 interview. “This thing was our first actual hit. We became a ‘date night’ band suddenly, where women started to come to the shows.”
Featured image by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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