Bruce Springsteen
On the occasion of receiving the Academy Award for Best Original Song, Bruce Springsteen demonstrated that his reach as an artist extended well beyond the recording studio and the concert stage. Born Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen on September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, he would go on to work across a range of creative disciplines — singer, songwriter, musician, composer, guitarist, pianist, record producer, and recording artist, as well as film actor, television actor, and film director.
Springsteen's career as a recording and performing artist took shape in 1972, when the E Street Band became his backing band. That working relationship has endured across decades, with most of his 21 studio albums featuring the E Street Band. Working primarily in English, Springsteen built a body of recorded work that spans these albums, each produced within a career that has consistently placed him among the most active figures in American popular music. His nickname, "the Boss," reflects a persona that has become closely associated with his public identity over the course of that career.
The range of honors Springsteen has received speaks to recognition across multiple spheres of American cultural life. He is a recipient of induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he has received the Kennedy Center Honors, one of the United States' most prominent awards for artistic achievement. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, was also conferred upon him, placing him in the company of figures recognized for significant contributions to American life. In addition, he received the MusiCares Person of the Year designation, an award given by the Recording Academy to artists who have made notable creative and humanitarian contributions.
His Academy Award for Best Original Song stands as a concrete marker of recognition that crossed from the music industry into the film world, consistent with the breadth of occupations he has held — including film actor and film director — beyond his primary identity as a singer and songwriter. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by the sitting president of the United States, remains among the most formal acknowledgments of his standing as an American musician who has worked across the recording, performing, and filmmaking industries since the early 1970s.
Quotes by Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen's insights on:
Baby this town rips the bones from your back / It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
Somewhere up the stairs, / Into the fire / May your strength give us strength / May your faith give us faith
Most of these most people's stage personas are created out of the flotsam and jetsam of their internal geography.
The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence
When you start talking about elections being rigged, you're pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it's a very, very dangerous thing to do.
I don't think people go to musicians for their political points of view. I think your political point of view is circumstances and then how you were nurtured and brought up.
I think there's only eight songs on 'Born to Run' - I don't think it's much more than 35 minutes long. But as you move into it, where every song comes up in the sequence makes a lot of sense - though we weren't thinking about it; we were going on instinct at the time.
You're always in a box, and you're an escape artist if you do what I do - or if you're a creative person, period. You build your box, and then you escape from it. You build another one, and you escape from it. That's ongoing.
While I wasn't very good at much else in school, in my creative-writing classes or when we had to do some writing in my English classes, I tended to do better at it.