Magic (Bruce Springsteen album)

Background

Magic was announced on August 16, 2007, following months of fevered recording speculation and weeks of equally fevered release speculation among the Springsteen faithful.

Of the album's tracks, "Long Walk Home" had been previously heard once, late on the 2006 Sessions Band Tour; the rest were new. Most of those were written by the end of 2006; Springsteen allowed producer Brendan O'Brien (returning for a role he had for The Rising and 2005's Devils & Dust) to pick the ones that worked the best. Recording began at Southern Tracks Recording Studio in Atlanta over a period of two months beginning March 2007. It was complicated by the band members' schedules, and especially drummer Max Weinberg's weekday commitments to taping Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The band did not record as a unit: rather, during the week Springsteen worked on vocal tracks and production; on weekends the core band of Weinberg, bassist Garry Tallent, and pianist Roy Bittan flew down to record the basic tracks with Springsteen. Then periodically the other band members were called in as needed to overdub their parts under producer O'Brien's watch. Only saxophonist and longtime foil Clarence Clemons was given different treatment, with O'Brien handing the studio over to Springsteen for recording of sax parts due to "a whole dynamic [between the two of them] that spans decades."

Upon its announcement, Magic was characterized by Springsteen's manager Jon Landau as a "high energy rock" album, with a "heavy E Street Band" sound. The initial track, "Radio Nowhere", was slated as the album's first single, for release to radio on September 4, 2007; however, it leaked to the Internet on August 22, 2007. The release of the CD form of the album on October 2, 2007 was preceded by a September 25, 2007 release on vinyl record, in order to qualify the album for the Grammy Awards of 2008 before the end-of-September cutoff.

The album became available for pre-order on iTunes on August 28, 2007, with a promotion featuring the release of "Radio Nowhere" as a free downloadable single; the first legs of the accompanying Magic Tour were announced as well. The album was ranked number two on Rolling Stone's list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007 and "Long Walk Home" was number eight on the magazine's list of 100 Best Songs of 2007 Magic was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album but lost to the Foo Fighters' Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace.

Album themes

Several songs in Magic express disillusionment with the state of American society in 2007 in particular; others, such as the title track (with its lyrics of "I got a shiny saw blade/All I need's a volunteer/I'll cut you in half/While you're smilin' ear to ear"), convey a more general sense of foreboding. "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" has been cited as a singularly "breezy" song on the album, though A. O. Scott of The New York Times notes that not even this track is "untouched by melancholy. Its narrator, after all, stands and watches as the girls of the title 'pass me by.'"

Several sources have postulated that the track "Last to Die", with its chorus of "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake/Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break", was inspired by Vietnam Veterans Against the War representative (and future senator and presidential candidate) John Kerry's 1971 testimony to the U.S. Senate, in which he asked "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?".

"Gypsy Biker" concerns the homecoming of a US soldier killed in action in Iraq, and Springsteen has said that "Livin' in the Future" references extraordinary rendition and illegal wiretapping. "Long Walk Home" is a metaphorical account of the narrator's sense that, in the artist's words, those people living at home "he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers."

Release and reception

Magic was Springsteen's seventh number one in the UK, with first week sales of 77,692, making it his fastest-starting release of the 21st century. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, becoming Springsteen's eighth #1 album in the US and selling about 335,000 copies in its first week. After falling to number two for one week, the album rose again to number one, selling about 77,000 copies that week.

The sales Magic gained in the US were achieved despite its receiving very little radio airplay. Fox News reported that media conglomerate Clear Channel had instructed its classic rock format stations not to play any tracks from Magic, even though they continued to play Springsteen songs from the 1970s and '80s. Clear Channel responded by saying that "in the first days after the CD's release," its stations played the record more than other stations did. By January 2009, Magic had sold one million copies in the US.

Track listing

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen.

Two weeks after the album's initial announcement, which included an eleven-song track listing, "Terry's Song" was added. It is a memorial song for Springsteen's long-time assistant Terry Magovern, who died on July 30, 2007. Some pressings of the CD pre-ordered through Sony Music or other channels did not contain the extra track. The album as sold through iTunes does not contain this track either.

Personnel