Magic by Bruce Springsteen
Magic is the fifteenth studio album by Bruce Springsteen, released in 2007 on Columbia Records. It was his first with the E Street Band since The Rising in 2002. The album was #2 on Rolling Stone's list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007. 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 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 entire album began leaking to the Internet on September 6, 2007. The following day, 93.3 The Wolf's Fast Freddy in Youngstown, Ohio, got a leaked copy and played the whole album over the air. In the following days tracks became available in more visible places, such as YouTube. On September 25, with the vinyl release being made, New York radio station Q1043 posted the entire album via Sneak Peek. Magic became available for purchase in Ireland, Belgium, and Germany on September 28. The album was #2 on Rolling Stone's list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007 and "Long Walk Home" was #8 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.
Bruce Springsteen reconvened the E Street Band to record 2007’s <i>Magic</i>, one of his most underrated albums—and one of his most thoroughly political. Producer Brendan O’Brien was once again behind the mixing desk, helping to deliver a modern-sounding, radio-friendly album, full of catchy tunes that backed up fierce, uncompromising lyrics. “Radio Nowhere”, the buzzy opening track, pays tribute to FM radio while also mourning its rapidly approaching demise; the song finally gave Springsteen an on-the-record opportunity to cry out “Is anybody alive out there?”—a line he’d been exhorting at live shows for years. “Girls in Their Summer Clothes”, meanwhile, is a ballad that casts Springsteen in the role of the crooner, with a touch of Wall of Sound on the production. But the heart of the record is in its unabashed criticism of George W. Bush’s administration, and the Iraq War it had undertaken in the early 2000s. Springsteen said that the title is about the times “when what’s true can be made to seem like a lie, and what’s a lie can be made to seem true”—and that’s exactly what he sings about in the title track: sleight-of-hand, subterfuge, legerdemain. The theme continues on “Livin’ in the Future”, in which the narrator insists that the terrible things they see and feel aren’t real: “We’re livin’ in the future/And none of this has happened yet.” The album’s denouement comes in the form of two late tracks: “Last to Die” and “Long Walk Home”. The former draws its title from a statement made by John Kerry in 1971, when he testified before Congress about Vietnam and asked, “Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake?” Springsteen applies that sentiment to the war in Iraq, noting cynically, “We don’t measure the blood we’ve drawn anymore/We just stack the bodies outside the door.” And “Long Walk Home”—an updated version of the story he told in <i>Born in the USA</i>’s “My Hometown”—is almost anthemic, with its narrator angry, but still hopeful.
