Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Nicknamed "the Boss", Springsteen has released 21 studio albums spanning six decades; most feature the E Street Band, his backing band since 1972.
Springsteen released his first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, in 1973. He achieved worldwide popularity with Born to Run (1975). He followed with Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and The River (1980), Springsteen's first album to top the Billboard 200 chart. After releasing the solo acoustic album Nebraska (1982), he recorded Born in the U.S.A. (1984) with the E Street Band. It is his most successful album and one of the best-selling albums of all time. Springsteen mostly hired session musicians for his next three albums, Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992), and Lucky Town (1992). He reassembled the E Street Band for Greatest Hits (1995), and recorded the acoustic album The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and the EP Blood Brothers (1996) solo.
Following the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Reunion Tour in 1999 and 2000, Springsteen released The Rising (2002), dedicated to the victims of the September 11 attacks. This was followed by two folk albums, Devils & Dust (2005) and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), his first cover album. Springsteen followed with Magic (2007), Working on a Dream (2009), Wrecking Ball (2012), and High Hopes (2014). In 2017, 2018, and 2021, Springsteen performed Springsteen on Broadway, performing songs and telling stories from his 2016 autobiography. He released the solo album Western Stars in 2019, Letter to You with the E Street Band in 2020, and a solo cover album, Only the Strong Survive, in 2022. With Letter to You, Springsteen became the first artist to release a top-five album in six consecutive decades. He released the politically charged "Streets of Minneapolis" in 2026, which reached number one on the iTunes Top Songs chart.
A prominent musician from the album era, Springsteen has sold more than 140 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. His accolades include 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, was named MusiCares person of the year in 2013, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 and the National Medal of Arts in 2023. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked Springsteen 23rd on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", describing him as "the embodiment of rock and roll". In 2025, Springsteen became one of only five artists to gross over $2.3 billion in touring thanks to his 2023–2025 Tour with the E Street Band.
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen was born at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, New Jersey on September 23, 1949. His parents were Adele Ann Springsteen (née Zerilli; 1925–2024) and Douglas Frederick "Dutch" Springsteen (1924–1998). Springsteen's mother, who was originally from the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, worked as a legal secretary and was the family's main breadwinner. His father was a World War II veteran who worked as a bus driver; he had mental health issues throughout his life, and they worsened in his later life. Springsteen is of Dutch, Irish, and Italian descent. He grew up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey.
Springsteen's Italian maternal grandfather, Anthony Zerilli, was born in Vico Equense and immigrated to the U.S. through Ellis Island. He arrived in the United States unable to read or write English, but went on to become a lawyer and impressed the young Springsteen as being "larger than life".
Springsteen's paternal ancestors were Dutch and Irish. His Dutch ancestors were among the early Dutch families who came to North America in the 17th century. Springsteen's paternal ancestor, John Springsteen, was a patriot in the American Revolution, which evolved into the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. The Springsteen surname originates in Groningen, a province in the Netherlands. The name is topographic; it is translated as "jump stone" and refers to a stepping stone used on unpaved streets or between two houses. His Irish roots are traced to the Garrity family of Rathangan, County Kildare and the McNicholas family of Treenagleragh in Kiltimagh, County Mayo.
Springsteen has two younger sisters, Virginia (born 1951) and Pamela (born c. 1962). Pamela Springsteen worked briefly as an actress and later as a photographer; she took photos for three of Springsteen's albums (Human Touch, Lucky Town, and The Ghost of Tom Joad).
Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima Catholic School in Freehold. He was at odds with the nuns and rebelled against the strictures imposed upon him; nevertheless, some of his music reflects a Catholic ethos and includes Irish Catholic hymns with a rock music twist. In 2012, Springsteen said that it was his Catholic upbringing rather than his political ideology that most influenced his music. He said his faith gave him a "very active spiritual life" but joked that this "made it very difficult sexually". He added, "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic".
Springsteen grew up hearing fellow New Jersey singer Frank Sinatra on the radio. By the age of seven, he became interested in being a musician after seeing Elvis Presley's performances on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 and 1957. Soon thereafter, his mother rented him a guitar from Mike Diehl's Music in Freehold for $6 a week. He took a few weeks of guitar lessons, but quit after they failed to provide him with the instant gratification he desired.
In ninth grade, Springsteen entered Freehold High School, which was a public high school. He did not fit in there, either. A former teacher said Springsteen was a "loner who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar". He graduated in 1967, but felt so alienated that he skipped his graduation ceremony. He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out.
At age 19, Springsteen was called for his draft physical, but failed it because of a concussion he had suffered in a motorcycle accident two years earlier; the concussion, combined with his behavior at induction, reportedly made him unacceptable for military service. In failing his examination, Springsteen likely avoided service in the Vietnam War.
In 1969, when he was 20 years old, Springsteen's parents and sister Pamela moved to San Mateo, California; he and his sister Virginia, who was married and pregnant at the time, remained in Freehold.
In 1964, Springsteen saw the Beatles' televised appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Inspired, he bought his first guitar for $18.95 at the Western Auto appliance store. Thereafter, he started playing for audiences with a band called the Rogues at local venues, including Elks Lodge in Freehold. Later that year, his mother took out a loan to buy him a $60 Kent guitar, an act he later memorialized in his song "The Wish". In 1965, he went to the house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become the lead guitarist and subsequently one of the lead singers of the Castiles, a band that recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township and played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Marion Vinyard said she believed the young Springsteen when he promised he would make it big. In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, which played in various clubs in New Jersey and at a major show at the Hotel Diplomat in New York City.
From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with the band Child, which later changed its name to Steel Mill and included Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin, and later Steven Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. Steel Mill performed at various Jersey Shore venues and also outside of New Jersey, in Richmond, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; and California, and gathered a cult following. In his January 1970 review of Steel Mill's show at The Matrix, music critic Philip Elwood wrote in the San Francisco Examiner that he had "never been so overwhelmed by a totally unknown talent" and called Steel Mill "the first big thing that's happened to Asbury Park since the good ship Morro Castle burned to the waterline of that Jersey beach in '34". Elwood praised the band's "cohesive musicality" and called Springsteen "a most impressive composer". In San Mateo, Steel Mill recorded three original Springsteen songs at Pacific Recording.