Happy 45th Anniversary to Buce Springsteen’s fifth studio album The River, originally released October 17, 1980.
This summer, we saw the release of Tracks II (2025), a collection of seven unreleased Bruce Springsteen records. It followed 1998’s Tracks, which contains more than fifty songs that never made it onto an album (although some were performed live or released as singles). Most Springsteen albums had dozens of songs up for consideration; Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) has ten songs, but the 2010 expanded edition contains twenty cut tracks. The man is a relentless editor.
Which makes The River (1980), his first record to reach #1 in the United States and his only double album until 2002’s The Rising, quite the anomaly. The story goes that Springsteen put together a full album called The Ties That Bind (eventually released in 2015) and scrapped it, deciding that it lacked the emotional punch of his other records. He kept writing and recording until manager Jon Landau proposed a double album. This gave us The River as we know it, a sprawling twenty tracks that veers from cheery bar-band rock to some of Springsteen’s darkest material to date.
The River’s length offers an unusual set of non-linear listening opportunities. It is more malleable than any other Springsteen record; when you put on Nebraska (1982) or Born to Run (1975), you know what you’re getting. But there are several different paths through The River; it is a heartland rock smorgasbord that provides whatever we need at a given moment. The point here isn’t to argue that The River is bloated—but that it’s a rich text that can serve many purposes; we should look for them. Here are four different ways to experience this LP.
Option 1: The River’s full runtime as a concept album.
Most Springsteen albums are concept albums. They aren’t high concept, but each has a dedicated focus. I read The River, when taken in its entirety, as a record about an alternate version of the E Street Band that never made it off the boardwalk. The breezy rock tunes are the actual set that the band plays to locals and revelers late into the evening as gigging musicians.
The darker tunes like “Independence Day” and “The River” narrate what happens in the musicians’ lives when they’re not on stage. They capture the “meanness in this world” that always dogs Springsteen’s characters, whether they’re plotting cathartic drives out of town or clocking in for another day at the refinery. Despite its girth, this conceptual version of The River is worth listening to in full because it is the experience described in the songs. Just like a Saturday night club gig, you party for a long time before something life-changing happens.
Listen to the Album:
Option 2: The Ties That Bind (scrapped 1979 single LP, released 2015)
Track Listing:*
The Ties That Bind
Cindy
Hungry Heart
Stolen Car
Be True
The River
You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
The Price You Pay
I Wanna Marry You
Loose Ends
*Not released on vinyl, so it is unclear how the original record would be conceived as two sides of an LP.
As I’ve opined elsewhere, one of the finest moments in Springsteen’s discography is the first harmonica note of “The River” on Live 1975-1985 (released 1986). Springsteen is minutes-deep into a story about the Vietnam War; the harmonica is a mourning wail for everyone who fought in that war and never went home.
The problem with The Ties That Bind—by far a weaker record compared to The River—is that this harmonica moment has nothing to haunt. The album never finds momentum; despite including noteworthy songs, it doesn’t summon the necessary drama for the moment. The party anthems aren’t his strongest crop; the better ones would be written later. And, without anchor songs like “Independence Day” and “Fade Away,” much of the weight rests on “The River.”
Even though the second half is stronger than the first (“The Price You Pay” and “I Wanna Marry You” make for a great late-album one-two punch), closer “Loose Ends” lacks the gravitas of previous Springsteen finales.
The Ties That Bind is then a prototype for Born in the U.S.A. (1984), a Springsteen album built around a relentless barrage of singles; the only problem is that the songs aren’t as good. But, if you’re looking for that kind of experience with more of a garage-rock sound, The Ties That Bind is your option.
Option 3: Hypothetical single LP structured like Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town
Track Listing:
Side A:
Hungry Heart
I’m a Rocker
The Price You Pay
Ramrod
Independence Day
Side B:
Cadillac Ranch
Jackson Cage
Point Blank
Sherry Darling
The River
On Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen used an album-structuring strategy called “Four Corners,” starting each side of the LP with hope and ending each side with despair or fear. This simple structure led to his most unified works, where tragedy stalks our deepest aspirations.
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While the full version of The River stays in one mode for long stretches (e.g. a string of party tunes), this version relies more on the push and pull of different emotions and tempos. Yearning in “Hungry Heart” regresses to teenage posturing in “I’m a Rocker,” which melts into the regretful mourning of “The Price You Pay.” On this iteration of The River, the compression of time de-emphasizes the original record’s lived-in feeling; it creates a montage-like affair where the camera shifts frequently to draw out the many mixed-up layers of coming of age in America.
Option 4: Hypothetical Missing Link Between Darkness on the Edge of Town and Nebraska
Track Listing:
Side A:
Stray Bullet*
The River
Stolen Car
Fade Away
Side B:
Independence Day
Wreck on the Highway
Drive All Night
I Wanna Marry You
*Outtake, featured on The Ties That Bind: The River Collection
Born to Run was the optimistic record about escaping your small town with twinges of doubt, near the end, of whether that’s even possible. Darkness on the Edge of Town expands on that doubt, capturing the malaise that takes hold if you don’t make it out. But Darkness focuses largely on individual struggles, leaving unexamined the romantic dimensions of this stuck feeling.
And by the time we get to Nebraska, most relationships have collapsed—we’re serial murderers or chasing ghosts. There is a gap in the discography for the romantic challenges that lurk in dead-end towns. This is where this hypothetical album resides—stories of relationships that are trying to find a way forward amidst the worst circumstances.
“The River” poses the famous question: “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true / or is it something worse?” This question dogs “Reason to Believe,” the finale to Nebraska, which simply observes that people find something to believe in, despite bleak circumstances. This hypothetical record has an answer in its finale, which stops short of saying he can solve all of someone’s problems:
“They say in the end, true love prevails
But in the end, true love can't be some fairytale
To say I'll make your dreams come true would be wrong
But maybe, darling, I could help them along.”
This is the resolution that we’ve been waiting for since “Jungleland” revealed the fraught implications of trying to run away from your problems. It turns out that we can’t fix each other, but we can find the way forward together. Before everything falls apart on Nebraska, The River is the story of how we find reasonable optimism amidst the worst this world has to offer.
Listen: