Tracks  by Bruce Springsteen

The truth is that the 1990s were not the best possible decade for Bruce Springsteen from an artistic perspective. He may have won the Grammy Award in 1994 for the song "Streets Of Philadelphia," which was featured in the movie "Philadelphia," but that did not seem to be enough. However, he was preparing his big comeback — as it happened in the years following 2000 — and he based it on his glorious past by releasing the four-disc box set "Tracks" (!) in 1998, featuring 66 songs that came from outtakes of the albums he had officially released up until that point.

The box set went platinum in the USA and achieved very good sales in many other countries as well. However, the important thing was that his fans realized, for example, that the 1980 album "The River" could have been a triple album instead of a double, and it would have been just as good, or that "Born In The U.S.A." from 1984 could have been made up of half or more of 12 different songs and still become the massive commercial success it was. Additionally, it became clear that Bruce Springsteen, for his own reasons, had kept about twenty more gems from his career up to that point in his drawer.

Were all 66 songs noteworthy? Categorically: no. However, if one focuses on the wealth hidden in disc 2 and disc 3 of the box set, they will be left speechless. The following year, a shortened version of the box set was released, called "18 Tracks," which contained 16 songs from the previous year's edition plus two more, "The Fever" and "Trouble River."