Bruce Springsteen

Two albums in and Columbia was losing faith. His first two records moved respectably among critics and almost nowhere else. Then Born to Run came out in August 1975, and two months later he was on the covers of both Newsweek and Time in the same week, the first artist to pull that off. Born to Run went seven times platinum. The hype had a head start: Jon Landau, the critic who'd written "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen" in 1974, eventually put down his notepad and became his producer.

At 76, Springsteen runs his career like an argument nobody asked him to make. His 2023-2025 world tour was called "one of the most successful tours of all time" by Pollstar, even after he postponed the remaining 2023 dates with peptic ulcer disease. He recovered, rescheduled, and came back angrier. The "Land of Hope and Dreams" American tour, announced in 2026, doubles as a political protest. He wrote "Streets of Minneapolis" in response to federal agent shootings during deportation operations. The stage show and the politics are the same thing now.

"The Boss" nickname came from the most unglamorous source imaginable: he collected the money after shows and split it evenly among his bandmates. His debut album almost didn't exist. Clive Davis rejected the original 1972 submission for lacking a hit single, so Springsteen quickly wrote "Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit in the Night" and re-recorded the whole thing.