Bruce Springsteen Releases First Song From New Country Album

Bruce Springsteen just dropped “Repo Man,” a hidden track from his stash of rare tunes that are finally coming out in a brand new box set.

While working on The Ghost of Tom Joad back in 1995, Bruce was also busy recording a country-inspired album called Somewhere North of Nashville—he basically made both records at the same time, which is kind of wild if you think about it. If you want to know more, you can listen to “Repo Man” below and check out Bruce’s own words about how this album came to be.

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.

We sometimes forget that artists work on more than one thing at once, and it’s cool to hear about the songs that almost disappeared forever.

Fans think it’s awesome when old songs finally see the light of day.

The new collection, Tracks II: The Lost Albums, will be out on June 27, and it’s not just “Repo Man” that’s new—Springsteen already let us hear the main song from Faithless (which was supposed to be for a movie that never happened), “Blind Spot” from Streets of Philadelphia Sessions (which has a bunch of samples), and “Rain in the River,” pulled from Perfect World. Altogether, the box set has a whopping 70 songs that nobody’s heard before.