7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7It was Born in the U.S.A. (1984) and his subsequent 18-month
world tour that cinched Springsteen’s reputation as the
preeminent writer-performer of his rock-and-roll period.
Springsteen’s social perspective has been distinctly
working-class throughout his career, a point emphasized
both by his 1995 album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, which con-
cerned itself with the economically and spiritually destitute
in America and by his 1994 hit single (his first in eight
years), the AIDS-related “Streets of Philadelphia,” from
the film Philadelphia, for which he won both an Academy
Award and a Grammy Award.
The other side of Springsteen’s work is reflected in the
albums that he produced in the period beginning with
Tunnel of Love (1987) and including Human Touch and Lucky
Town (released simultaneously in 1992). The songs on these
albums are intensely personal reflections on intimate rela-
tionships. In general, they have not been as popular.
Bridging all this is the five-record set Bruce Springsteen
and the E Street Band Live 1975–1985 (1986), which captures
as much of his highly visual stage show of that period as
can be rendered in a solely audio form. The breakup of the
E Street Band in 1989 and general trends in pop music
fashion curbed Springsteen’s popularity. In 1998 he put
together a box set, Tracks, consisting for the most part of
leftover material that had failed to make the cut on his
albums with the band. This grandiose gesture established
him as prolix beyond all but a couple of peers. Sales of
Tracks were trivial compared with those for Live.
In 1999 Springsteen reunited the E Street Band. They
appeared with him when he alone was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in early 1999, then spent a
year touring with him, resulting in a live album (Live in
New York City [2001]) but only a handful of new songs. On
Sept. 21, 2001, Springsteen performed the national debut
of his song “My City of Ruins” on a television special. It