Springsteen’s first two albums were commercial duds. He had no money, and the sound he wanted for his third record—The Boss later described it as ‘Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan produced by Phil Spector’—required months of studio tinkering to perfect. So Jimmy Iovine (then a recording engineer, now the head of Interscope Records) took care of hiding stacks of overdue bills from the record label while Springsteen obsessed over things like just how many guitar overdubs the title track needed. If it seems trivial to note that the final tally was 12, listen again, because, it’s the accumulation of details, both musical (the warm wind of the saxophone on “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” the violin that comes out of nowhere on “Jungleland”) and lyrical (‘The screen door slams/ Mary’s dress waves…’) that makes Springsteen’s grandiosity both operatic and personal. No one before or since has tried to pack as much of the American experience into 39 minutes, and no one has come as close to succeeding.
All-TIME 100 Albums
The album may be dead, but it's certainly not forgotten. TIME's critics have chosen the 100 greatest and most influential musical compilations since 1954.
Born to Run
Full List
1950s
1960s
- Abbey Road
- Bitches Brew
- Stand!
- Astral Weeks
- The Band
- At Folsom Prison
- Lady Soul
- The Beatles (“The White Album”)
- Are You Experienced
- I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- The Velvet Underground and Nico
- Blonde on Blonde
- Pet Sounds
- Revolver
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Otis Blue
- Rubber Soul
- A Love Supreme
- Live at the Apollo (1963)
- Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
- King of the Delta Blues
1970s
- London Calling
- One Nation Under a Groove
- Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
- Rumours
- Hotel California
- Ramones
- Songs in the Key of Life
- Born to Run
- Horses
- Red Headed Stranger
- Call Me
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
- The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust
- Exile on Main Street
- Talking Book
- The Harder They Come
- Blue
- Coat of Many Colors
- Hunky Dory
- Led Zeppelin IV (a.k.a. Zoso)
- Paranoid
- Sticky Fingers
- Tapestry
- What’s Going On
- Who’s Next
- After the Gold Rush
- Bridge Over Troubled Water
- John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
- Moondance
1980s
- Like a Prayer
- Paul’s Boutique
- The Stone Roses
- It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
- Straight Outta Compton
- Straight Outta Compton
- Document
- Paid in Full
- Sign O’ The Times
- The Joshua Tree
- Graceland
- Master of Puppets
- Raising Hell
- Legend
- Stop Making Sense
- The Great Twenty-Eight
- Thriller
- Back in Black
- Purple Rain
1990s
2000s