Bruce Springsteen, “Tracks II: The Lost Albums,” and the Enduring Virtue of Perfectionism

The lessons learned from a summer listening to Springsteen vault gems.

Just when you think you know someone based on a half-century’s worth of incredible artistic output, they open up their vault and let everyone take a look inside.

That was what it felt like when Bruce Springsteen finally dropped Tracks II, a generous (seven albums’ worth) helping of unreleased material that stretches from the early 80s into the 2010s. It’s a portrait of the Boss’s virtuosity as a songwriter and storyteller, no doubt, but it’s also an ode to perfectionism as a virtue. Most archival collections, especially from a rock artist of Springsteen’s stature, keep listeners at arm’s length by encasing era-specific nostalgia in glass cases. Tracks II felt different. It was emotionally present, implicitly showcasing how certain decisions, specifically what he chose not to release at a particular time in his trajectory, shaped how we think of him as Americana personified.

After listening to the entire box set, intriguing questions bubbled up. What if Nebraska had never seen the light of day? What if some of the songs you hear on albums like The Ghost of Tom Joad and Magic were swapped out for some of these tracks that sat in the vault for years? What if another Springsteen classic had sat on the shelf instead, deemed too strange or off-brand to make the cut? More than discovery, Tracks II clarifies the thought process behind Springsteen’s mythos in a completely satisfying way.

How Tracks II Reframes Bruce Springsteen’s Career Narrative

To understand Tracks II, I think it helps to go back to its predecessor, which dropped in 1998. That 66-song collection traced his lineage from the first sessions he completed with writer-producer John Hammond in 1972 up to Joad in 1995. It was an eclectic smorgasboard of demos, outtakes, and, in some cases, live staples that reframed his legacy for die-hards and casual listeners alike. Songs like “Roulette” received such a rapturous response that fans couldn’t believe it didn’t make it onto 1980’s The River, exceptional as that double LP already is. More than that, however, it whetted appetites for what other goodies lay behind that vault door.

Turns out, there are a LOT of them.

Tracks II: The Lost Albums does what every good sequel should: go deeper without losing the overall narrative. Spanning 83 songs and amounting to over 5 hours of material, most of these parts are, from what I’ve read, fully sequenced and produced albums that Bruce and his team purposely left unreleased. Unlike the first Tracks, which jumped around chronologically and leaned mainly into curiosities, Tracks II plays like a proper, era-specific time capsule. You're not hearing outtakes per se. You’re strolling through alternate artistic realities, catching glimpses of what might have been had he chased different instincts or ghosts from his past.

Why These Tracks II Albums Never Came Out (Until Now)

Unlike some of his other rock contemporaries, the Boss doesn’t hoard songs for the sake of it. Like a collector who hems and haws about plumbing the depths of their vaults for additional material to share. Instead, he curates his narrative with uncompromising precision.

Each of his albums, mainly from Darkness on the Edge of Town through Tunnel of Love, is built to convey a specific emotional arc to the listener. If a song didn’t strike the right balance of hopefulness and gritty verisimilitude, it was left out. Sonic and songwriting quality (in a vacuum, at least) be damned. If a track didn’t fit whatever the this-version-of-me mold Springsteen was focused on at any given moment, it got cut. Not because it wasn’t great, but because it would’ve broken the spell.

The first LP in the box set, labeled LA Garage Sessions ‘83, is a good example of music that is frequently compelling, but fits awkwardly between two distinct entries in his catalog: Nebraska, his rawest, most austere full-length release, and Born in the U.S.A., a far more crowdpleasing affair, even when it’s no less unflinching than its predecessor. As catchy as they are, for different reasons too, songs like “Don’t Back Down On Our Love” and live staple “Unsatisfied Heart” don’t fit neatly within either version of the same narrative.

At times, the departure from Springsteen’s musical persona is so jarring that I can understand why he and his team may have held it back initially. The Streets of Philadelphia Sessions don’t quite live up to the hype of being his “hip-hop album,” but there are cuts like “We Fell Down” and “Farewell Party” that make me want to hear his take on a Massive Attack or Thievery Corporation aesthetic (there’s still time, I guess). Even more confounding (and creatively astounding) is Faithless, the scrapped soundtrack for a “modern Western” that never materialized on the big screen. It’s the most potent album of these previously lost tapes, with tracks like “All God’s Children” and “My Master’s Hand” hinting at an alternate career where he would’ve won additional Oscars for Original Song and Score. It’s wild to consider.

Even the softer, more casual-sounding recordings on his country album, The Twilight Hours, the craftsmanship and polish are undeniable. Experience will get you at least part of the way there, not to mention work ethic, but you can’t have a perfectionist streak this consistent without Springsteen’s level of talent as a songwriter. Or is it the other way around? Do you only get to breathe the rarified air of “rock music legend” if you’re willing to push yourself beyond what others may consider reasonable? You hear some of these songs and can’t help but think of other pop or rock acts that could kill to have some of these in their arsenal. Not necessarily because they scream massive hits in some cases, but because of how reliable they are, or would be on tour. A solid, unassuming ballad like “I’ll Stand By You” would be equally at home in the hands of Luke Combs as it would be in the hands of Mac DeMarco, Charlie Puth, or James Arthur.

In the macro, the most critical takeaway from Tracks II is just how ruthless a curator the Boss has been this entire time, maybe without us even knowing it.

Perfectionism as Legacy-Building

It’s easy to paint perfectionism as a flaw. Goodness knows it’s been flagged as a negative over and over again in my career. Too obsessed with the details. Too high a quality standard for other people’s comfort or taste. Too much of a hard-ass about what content should sound like and accomplish from a storytelling point of view.

But, as a multi-day listening experience, Tracks II reminded me that, when channeled in the right way, perfectionism can still be a virtue. In Springsteen’s case, his instinct for what material was worth sharing with his audience and what wasn’t, even as trends changed and several younger generations discovered his music, is why we’re even having this conversation in the first place. You can quibble over the merits of studio efforts like Human Touch and The Rising, but even those relative dips in quality aren’t without their merits. He’s never entirely run out of racetrack artistically, which is remarkable in and of itself.

Because he held himself to an unreasonably high bar, the vault is this deep. Because he second-guessed, edited, and postponed so many tracks, we now have an archive that feels like a second discography. Songs like “Sugarland,” “The Word,” and “Between Heaven and Earth” would be highlights in someone else’s career retrospective. For Springsteen, it’s a fun little morsel for fans and the curious. Elevated, Michelen Star-level debris.

Was Springsteen guilty of hoarding his brilliance? Or has it merely taken him this long to make peace with it? That he stopped waiting for perfect alignment and gave us what he had lying around—unfinished stories, orphaned songs, broken mirrors of past selves—is a gift all its own, albeit with a morale at its core: sometimes, it’s good to lean into perfectionism.

It takes guts to share what you once rejected. It takes humility and vision to wait and wait and wait until the world is ready to hear what you can’t (or won’t) let go of. I don’t think Tracks II is meant as some throwaway B-roll. They’re testaments to artistic growth, the kind that comes with refining your art over and over again until it’s undeniable. Unignorable. Thankfully for us, the bar stayed high all those years.

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Did you listen to all of Tracks II? What are your thoughts? Shout them out in the comments.