Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Share First Song From Unvaulted Country Album: Listen

Bruce Springsteen has released “Repo Man,” the latest in a series of rarities from lost albums unvaulted for a new box set. This one comes from Somewhere North of Nashville, the country album Springsteen recorded with the E Street Band in 1995, “on the side” of their concurrent work on The Ghost of Tom Joad, as he puts it in a press release. Below, listen to the song and read Springsteen’s summary of the album’s origins.

What happened was I wrote all these country songs at the same time I wrote ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad.’ Those sessions completely overlap each other. I’m singing ‘Repo Man’ in the afternoon and ‘The Line’ at night. So the country record got made right along with ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad.’ ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ got me connected to my socially conscious or topical songwriting. So that’s where ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ came from. But at the same time I had this country streak that was also running through those sessions and I ended up making a country record on the side.

Tracks II: The Lost Albums is out June 27. Before today, Springsteen had shared the title track from Faithless, the score to a movie that never got made; “Blind Spot” from the sample-based record Streets of Philadelphia Sessions; and “Rain in the River” from his compilation Perfect World. The box set collects a further 70 unreleased songs.