Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen emerged from the bar-band circuit of Asbury Park, New Jersey, with an obsessive work ethic, a talent for marathon performances and a Dylanesque ambition to write about working-class American life with the same seriousness that the novel gave it. His first two albums (Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, 1973) were dense with words and promise but found limited commercial audience.

Born to Run (1975) broke through: its title track, a cinematic production built from Spectorian wall-of-sound ambitions and Chuck Berry guitar, offered escape from the industrial dead-ends of suburban New Jersey as metaphor for American aspiration more broadly. The album made the covers of both Time and Newsweek simultaneously, something no rock artist had achieved before.

Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) was harder and more stripped-down; The River (1980) and Nebraska (1982) continued his examination of working-class life. Born in the U.S.A. (1984) — often misread as triumphalist — was a searing indictment of the treatment of Vietnam veterans. His catalog is one of the most sustained explorations of American social geography in popular music.