Bruce Springsteen’s latest release is an old song called “Faithless”. It precedes his upcoming compilation album, Tracks II: The Lost Albums, due out on June 27, 2025. Like Bruce Springsteen’s character in “Faithless”, the once-lost collection of albums gets reborn alongside several missing records he exhumed from his vault.
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About “Faithless”
A (still unknown) filmmaker approached Springsteen to write the soundtrack to a “spiritual Western” called Faithless. Following his 2005 tour in support of Devils & Dust, Springsteen got to work and composed 11 tracks at his Florida home. Just two weeks later, he’d written an album.
“I stood in the fields of the mountainside
Looked out across the open land
I walked in the valley ’neath an endless sky
Faithless, faithless, faithless, then I found you.”
The title track describes a spiritual awakening. Though the film was only an idea then, Springsteen said in a statement, “You could recognize details and maybe a character or two. But for the most part, I just wrote atmospheric music that I thought would fit.”
“I reached for the hem of His garment
I stood in the light of the doorway
I saw my face in the waters at the riverside
Faithless, faithless, faithless.”
‘Tracks II: The Lost Albums’
The lost soundtrack went into Springsteen’s vault because the film never started production. However, it appears on Tracks II: The Lost Albums, a seven-disc collection that follows Springsteen’s 1998 box set Tracks.
Springsteen’s “lost albums” were recorded between 1983 and 2018 and include the following titles:
L.A. Garage Sessions ’83, Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions, Faithless, Somewhere North Of Nashville, Inyo, Twilight Hours, and Perfect World.
Of the 83 songs included in the set, 74 have never been officially released.
Lost and Found
Springsteen worked on the soundtrack as a solo project. But the album also includes Springsteen’s wife, Patti Scialfa, and their two sons. Also appearing are producer Ron Aniello, E Street Band violist Soozie Tryell, and backing vocalists Lisa Lowell, Curtis King Jr., Michelle Moore, and Ada Dyer.
The character in Bruce Springsteen’s “Faithless” finally sees the light, to borrow a phrase. It parallels how the Boss wrote music for a film that didn’t exist. He couldn’t see it. So he navigated his way using feelings and imagination.
Faith, by definition, is belief in something without proof. Yet Springsteen wrangled “Faithless” and an unmade spiritual Western into existence, and all he needed was two weeks and an acoustic guitar to do it.
“I woke by the rocks of the river
Faithless, faithless, faithless, and then I found you.”
Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation
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