Bruce Springsteen

When BruceSpringsteen finally broke through to national recognition in the fall of 1975 after a decade of trying, critics hailed him as the savior of rock & roll, the single artist who brought together all the exuberance of '50s rock and the thoughtfulness of '60s rock, molded into a '70s style.

Springsteen's album, Born to Run, released in 1975, became a hit, and he jumped to arena status as a live act.

Two decades laterSpringsteen remained an established star who could look back on a career that had produced one of the best-selling albums of all time, sold-out stadium shows, Grammy awards and an Oscar, and a group of imitators who constituted their own subgenre of popular music. If he no longer seemed divine, he remained popular enough for his Greatest Hits album to enter the charts at number one.

Growing up in southern New Jersey,Springsteen turned to rock & roll as a teenager and played in a series of bands from the mid-'60s on, varying in style from garage rock to power trio blues-rock. When he was signed to Columbia Records in 1972, he brought into the studio many of the New Jersey-based musicians with whom he'd played over the years. Some of them became the E-Street band.

Springsteen probably is best known for his album Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. alone and became one of the best-selling albums of all time with seven singles hitting the top 10, and the successful world tour that followed it. "Dancing in the Dark" was the biggest of seven hit singles from Born in the U.S.A., peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard music charts. A number of the videos for the album were made by famous film directors Brian De Palma or John Sayles.

The Born in the U.S.A. period represented the height of Springsteen's visibility in popular culture and the broadest audience he would ever reach. Live/1975–85, a five-record box set, was released near the end of 1986 and also became a huge success, selling 13 million units in the U.S. and becoming the first box set to debut at No. 1 on the U.S. album charts. It is one of the best selling live albums of all time.

Springsteen's most recent album, titled Magic, was released on October 2, 2007. Recorded with the E Street Band, it featured 10 newSpringsteen songs plus "Long Walk Home," and "Terry's Song," a tribute to Springsteen's long-time assistant Terry Magovern who died on July 30, 2007. On October 7, Magic debuted at number 1 in Ireland and the UK. On October 20, 2007 Media Traffic reported that Springsteen's Magic sold 563,000 copies around the world in its first week, making it the best-selling record in the world for that particular week.

In April 2008,Springsteen announced his endorsement of U.S. Senator Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign.

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