10. The Promise (2010)

In the wake of the artistic triumph and sudden success of Born To Run in 1975, Springsteen found himself in a bind professionally and at a crossroads creatively. Embroiled in a lawsuit with his soon to be ex-manager Mike Appel, Springsteen was prevented from recording or releasing a new album. As a result, it would be 1978 before Darkness On The Edge Of Town arrived. Far from the unproductive stretch this appears to be on paper, the time period saw Springsteen entering his most prolific phase, the late ’70s to early ’80s heyday in which he produced multiple albums’ worth of material that would be shelved, only to be later released in the four-disc 1998 collection Tracks and then, in 2010, with this, The Promise.

Specifically, The Promise arrived as a project interwoven with a slightly late anniversary package for Darkness On The Edge Of Town, and elucidates all the different paths Springsteen was considering in the strained interim between Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Rightfully realizing that Born To Run was the peak of what he could achieve with his earlier themes and sounds, Springsteen looked to new ideas, new structures. The difference between Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge Of Town is striking, and The Promise details all the things that could have been. We could have had an old-school R&B-inflected album if he’d gone the route of “Fire” and “Ain’t Good Enough For You.” There were chiming pop songs like “Gotta Get That Feeling,” “Rendezvous,” or “The Little Things (My Baby Does)” that suggested a far more romantic direction than the relative gruffness that eventually greeted listeners on Darkness. Tracks like “It’s a Shame,” “Come On (Let’s Go Tonight)”, and “The Promise” point towards the album that eventually came to be.

It may seem odd to be ranking what is basically a leftovers collection above full-fledged albums. The advantage of The Promise, though, is that unlike the more expansive Tracks it focuses on a very specific era, and manages to feel like a lost Springsteen album from the late ’70s. A lot of the material here is just as good as stuff that made it on the actual albums, or the stuff that already saw release with Tracks. For me, more work of this caliber from Springsteen’s peak era automatically pushes it past many of the official albums that were released before its eventual reveal. Even outside of its musical strengths, The Promise joins Tracks as crucial connective tissue for anyone interested in Bruce, fleshing out more of the musical and personal steps between some of his most iconic albums.