Here we are at the end of the road with Springsteen’s final studio album.

At least, for now. Within a few days we’ll have seven previously unreleased studio albums to absorb and while Tracks isn’t included in this rundown, the albums that make up Tracks II: The Lost Albums are just that, full studio albums. There’s also confirmation that, along with Tracks III (ffs, that vault must have been huge) Bruce also has a new solo studio album ‘in the can’ earmarked for a 2026 release. It’s like he doesn’t read this blog with the amount of work he’s lining up for me.*

Where was I? Oh, yes, for now. Letter To You was an album that came by relative surprise in its timing mid pandemic (he’d managed get the band together for a week at the end of the previous year**) and in its absolute quality and power. Letter to You feels like a much-needed warm hug from an old friend you didn’t expect to see again —if that friend was a thunderous barroom preacher with a worn leather jacket, a telecaster slung over his back and a saxophone-wielding mate waiting in the car.

If this turns out to be the last E Street Band powered album, it’s one hell of a bow out; it’s a combination of everything that was and still is great about it with relatively minimal production or overdub. Springsteen calls back to his past magnificently – the record bristles with revisited old chestnuts like ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’, the mildly Dylan-esque ‘Song for Orphans’, and the swaggering ‘If I Was the Priest’ rubbing shoulders with new tracks like ‘Burnin’ Train’ and ‘Last Man Standing’ that bring the E Street Band’s stadium roar back in full force. While at times there’s an odd juxtaposition between songs written by Thesaurus Bruce and One-Phrase-Repeated-Over-and-Over Bruce, the combination is a winner. It’s like we’ve run into him at a bar and he just had to tell us one last story (or twelve).

Where this sits in the overall Springsteen album run-down I’ve yet to figure out but Letter To You is certainly his strongest and most consistently spot-on since Magic. That it’s the first time since The River that the band worked through songs without having had them demoed first is also clear – there’s a sense of spontaneity and freshness in the arrangements that hasn’t been heard in decades. There’s very little to nitpick about in Letter To You but…

Least: The Power of Prayer

While ‘Rainmaker’ hasn’t aged as well as it could have and ‘House of a Thousand Guitars’ is a little let down by the repetition of its title, ‘The Power of Prayer’ is absolutely the weakest link on an otherwise indecently strong album. Feeling more like it would be at home on Working on a Dream, Springsteen’s gospel inclinations here come off less like a heartfelt epiphany and more like a cliche-laden preacher hitting the stage unprepared. It’s an empty-cliche-ridden snoozer for me, it aims high and wants to hit that uplifting spiritual power of earlier efforts but leans on formula instead rather than feeling. I mean – when was the last time you ran your fingers through the hair of your significant other and thought ‘that’s the power of prayer’***? It may well be sincere but so is a 99p greeting card from Sainsbury’s.

Most: Ghosts

Hands down the album’s finest, Ghosts charges in on a revved-up E Street engine and never lets off. It’s a swirling elegy for lost bandmates and the magic they created together but manages to balance that sense of nostalgia with catharsis. Time passes and moves even for our heroes. You feel old, you feel alive but, for these glorious five and a half minutes you feel together with Bruce and the E Street Band.

What makes ‘Ghosts’ – and the best of this album – work so well in 2020 and 2025 is the sense that these songs didn’t spend too much time in gestation. There’s no feeling of over-working or heavy production. Bruce isn’t trying to venture into a different sonic direction here. He doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, just crank up the Chevy and happily barrel down memory lane.

Letter to You is the grown-up version of Born to Run, with a few hands dragging in sentimental baggage. It’s occasionally corny, but mostly full-blooded and triumphant. And when ‘Ghosts’ kicks in, you remember why you climbed in the passenger seat in the first place: for the ride, for the stories, and for the shared scars of friendship and loss. Life ain’t always a beauty but, hey, it’s alright.

*Of course he does.

** Two thoughts – chronologically this places those sessions in the same year as the final Western Stars sessions as well as those for Twilight Hours on Tracks II. Secondly: these songs were written following a bout of writers’ block and after the death of his friend and on an acoustic guitar given to him by a fan after one of his “Springsteen on Broadway” shows. That’s one hell of a burst of creativity.

***as a Humanist the answer is ‘never.’

Ok…. let’s get back into it. Western Stars is still the odd one in the Springsteen back catalogue – while it may well be that some of the albums on Tracks II: The Lost Albums will fill in some of the steps that Bruce to get here, it sits apart at the moment; neither the acoustic, bare-bones approach of his other ‘solo’ albums or as ‘rock’ as his other work with full bands. Much like We Shall Overcome.. this is vey much a one-off detour*.

Where this album sits in my own ranking of Springsteen’s albums will vary depending on the mood I’m in: with the passing of time this album’s single-sonic style has meant that it’s not one I reach for typically and if you’re not up for that sound, it’s a skip as very little on here that varies from the ‘Bruce goes big, full-orchestra Glen Campbell / Burt Bacharach / Jimmy Webb’. At times the stylistic choice with its over-emphasis on twang and orchestral pop feels forced (much like a lot that Ron Aniello ‘brings’ to Springsteen’s music of late) and weighs downs songs that, in another setting, might have bounced freer without the need to add them on.

There are, however, a bevvy of solid Springsteen songs on Western Stars that are not only strong enough to withstand the production treatment but flourish in their arrangements and Bruce’s sonic departure. ‘Sleepy Joe’s Cafe’, for example, wouldn’t work in any other context yet here is a great addition. Songs like ‘Western Stars,’ ‘Chasin’ Wild Horses,’ ‘Hello Sunshine’, ‘There Goes My Miracle’ and closing ‘Moonlight Motel’ feel like Springsteen had got a very good core of songs for this project.

Sadly, like a lot of his later-career albums at this point, there weren’t quite enough and so we get some reheated tunes – we know now that ‘Somewhere North of Nashville’ has been repurposed from a mid-’90s project – and heavy production to polish up the lesser tracks.

Take, for example:

Least: Hitch Hikin’

Given that some of Bruce’s previous album openers have been real strong jump-off points (think ‘Radio Nowhere’, ‘We Take Care of Our Own’ for recent examples or ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ or ‘Thunder Road’ or fucking ‘Born in the USA’), Western Stars gets off to a sluggish limp with a song that could’ve been fine were it not for the hammy production and slopping on of backing and orchestration that does nothing for it.

Most: Drive Fast (The Stuntman)

‘Drive Fast (The Stuntman)’ fits very firmly in the list of great Springsteen songs that work well in this album’s context and would actually work well elsewhere – here the orchestra joins and swells as Springsteen’s character piece – an injured stuntman recalling his glory days – unfolds, elsewhere it could just as easily be a Nils Lofgren slide. While this character – like so many on Western Stars – is past his best, Springsteen gives them a beautiful treatment.

*excluding the ‘film’ version of the same album that followed a few months later and stapled on a cover of fucking ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’.