If you knew nothing else about him there’s still a good chance you’d recognize Bruce Springsteen by the name "The Boss." The nickname predates his entire career as a recording artist, going back to his days as a teenage bandleader at the Jersey Shore. In a bit of amusing irony, it’s also a name that stands in complete contrast to his 50 year canon of songs from the perspective of working-class folks. "I hate being called the boss," Springsteen admitted in a 1999 biography. "I hate bosses." 

In "The Wish," a 1987 studio outtake eventually released on Tracks in 1998, Springsteen’s narrator traces his adult prosperity as The Boss back to a single childhood Christmas when his mother bought him a "brand-new Japanese guitar." The lyrics echo Springsteen’s real-life story of his own first electric guitar — a Japanese-made Kent, that he purchased for $70 in 1964 with the help of a loan his mother had taken out. Fifty-seven Christmases later, in December 2021, Springsteen sold his fifty-year catalog of songs for a record-setting $550 million dollars.

Over the course of those 50 years, Springsteen has won 20 GRAMMY Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and a Tony Award for his one-man show "Springsteen on Broadway." Though still one EMMY Award short of a full EGOT, he’s nonetheless made do with honors like the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to him in 2016 by President Barack Obama (with whom he would later host a podcast and write a New York Times bestselling book) and a planet — 23990 Springsteen — named in his honor. 

From his inauspicious start to his initial commercial peak in the 1980s, and through a career resurgence in the early 2000s, one of the Boss’ most remarkable achievements is that his songs have never seemed to lose their blue-collar everyman perspective. If anything, Springsteen's early climb to success found him advocating more fiercely and empathetically for the American working class. Over the decades and 20 studio albums, he established an unmatched pedigree for literary power and modern everyman myth-making, — powers that would eventually put him back in the spotlight at a time when America desperately needed those types of stories.

In this edition of Songbook — and ahead of the launch of  Bruce Springsteen Live! at the GRAMMY Museum — GRAMMY.com explores how The Boss’s empathy for his working-class characters evolved alongside his own commercial success in the 1970s, and how that reputation gave way to his comeback in the 2000s.   

"A town full of losers": 1972 - 1975 

Bruce Springsteen was only 23 years old when he signed to Columbia Records in 1972, but had already been thoroughly fawned over by local live music critics and industry types who were hailing the young songwriter as something like "the next Bob Dylan." 

Although his 1973 debut Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ and its September followup The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle both underperformed commercially compared to that effusive praise, the young songwriter was beginning to carve out his thematic niche, expanding granular portraits of Jersey Shore life into ambitious outsized literary dramas. The sophomore record closes on a 10-minute-long rock opera called "New York City Serenade" set in a brutal and desperate vision of the Big City that poses a constant threat to the song’s impoverished fictional protagonists: "It’s midnight in Manhattan, this is no time to get cute," Springsteen whispers. "So walk tall / Or baby, don’t walk at all."

After the commercial disappointment of the first two records, released less than a year apart, Columbia offered a massive hail mary budget to Springsteen and the newly-minted E Street Band for their third record, which they recorded over a grueling and obsessive 14 month period. When it was finally released in 1975, Born To Run became a breakthrough record for the band almost in spite of Columbia’s similarly aggressive marketing campaign. The album, which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, showed  steady growth in its first few weeks on the backs of a successful word-of-mouth radio campaign, itself based on a leaked early mix of the title track.

The real-life underdog story of Born To Run bubbles up under every beat and every word, with an inherent drama that builds gentle tracks into dense and theatrical finales. Overeager characters like the narrator of "Born To Run" talk themselves through feverish and impassioned cases for escaping the "death trap" of small town life and an existence doomed to "sweat[ing] it out on the streets / Of a runaway American dream."

The long-winded narrator of "Thunder Road" puts the stakes more bluntly: "It’s a town full of losers / And I’m pulling out of here to win." The abstraction between those characters and their authors — a young band mounting a last-ditch effort at breaking out of the local bar band circuit into a tangible future in music — allows Born To Run to point outwards to a much broader feeling of American restlessness: the particularly youthful and overzealous belief that our potential in life is limited only by our force of will.

"I ain’t nothin’ but tired": 1978-1984

As Born To Run lifted the band into steady commercial success, Springsteen's portraits of working class life were growing increasingly disillusioned and fatalistic. Throughout their 1978 followup Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen recharacterizes working class restlessness as a self-destructive impulse that drives the album’s characters into crime and compulsive thrill in a meager attempt at escaping from the endless grind of their working lives. In 1980 they released their biggest hit yet, "Hungry Heart" — a misleadingly upbeat lead single from The River in which a narrator tries to use restlessness as an excuse for suddenly abandoning his wife and kids. 

The title track of The River mines an even more devastatingly ordinary sense of realism in telling the story of a teenage couple whose relationship is eroded over the years by the whim of the volatile economic conditions around them. Like before, Springsteen dangles a symbol of escape — a nearby river where the couple used to swim in their honeymooning days — but after years of growing alienation it starts to become a symbol of a life they were never allowed to have, and a relationship that was doomed from the beginning. "Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true?" Springsteen sings quietly in the climax, through clenched teeth. "Or is it something worse / That sends. me down to the river / Though I know the river is dry?"

Nebraska, released in 1982, was the first album Springsteen had ever recorded without the E Street Band. Assembled from a set of cassette demos Springsteen had recorded alone at home, the album’s stark and lonely acoustic landscapes matched an even bleaker assessment of poverty and the American Dream. Its characters — outcasts, outlaws, and children who seem doomed to become one or the other — speak through Springsteen with a soft and inarticulate reservedness about a world of  economic chaos and  violence that was both fundamental and inescapable. 

The album begins almost identically to Born To Run: the narrator pulls up to a house where a girl stands out front, and eventually they drive off together in an attempt to escape their prescribed lot in life. But where "Thunder Road" had found personal urgency in a vague sense of autobiography, "Nebraska" is a true crime story narrated from the perspective of real-life spree killer Charles Starkweather, a 19-year-old garbage collector who killed 11 people across Wyoming and Nebraska with his girlfriend in 1957 after his economic anxiety gave way to an epiphany that "dead people are all on the same level." 

Springsteen’s retelling withers the triumphant climax of "Thunder Road" into a resigned and uncertain declaration of inevitability: "They wanted to know why I did what I did," Springsteen murmurs. "Well, sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world."

Born In The USA, Springsteen’s colorful and energetic 1984 reunion with the E Street Band, would become not only Springsteen’s best selling record, but one of the best selling records of all time. Culled largely from the same writing sessions as Nebraska, its fist-pumping maximalism only barely obscures the lyrics’ continued descent into economic fatalism.

Its widely-misinterpreted, largely ironic title track is really a seething indictment of the United States’ treatment of returning war veterans; even the bouncy pseudo-nursery rhyme chorus of "Working on the Highway" openly bears its total resignation ("Working on the highway, laying down the blacktop / Working on the highway, all day long I don’t stop"). "Dancing In The Dark," which won Springsteen his first GRAMMY in 1985, spins existential defeatism into something between a sad boy pickup line and a statement of solidarity: "I ain’t nothing but tired… Man I win’t getting nowhere / I’m just living in a dump like this," its narrator complains at first. "I’ll shake this world off my shoulders," he decides later. "Come on, baby, this laugh’s on me."

The album’s most subdued offering, "My Hometown," sheds the gentlest and most personal light on Springsteen’s hardened relationship to the conditions of the American working class as its narrator softly tangles nostalgic memories with an unflinching look at his hometown’s brutal history of racial tension and economic turmoil. When the town’s textile mill shuts down, putting a huge number of residents out of work, he finally decides to pack up his family and move away but implores his son to take one last look at where he comes from.

The second verse alludes to a real incident of racist violence that occurred in Springsteen’s own hometown of Freehold, New Jersey in the 1960s. Ironically, in 1986, two years after the song was released, Freehold closed its main manufacturing plant, a 3M factory, leaving hundreds of local laborers out of work. The Boss, at the height of his fame, returned home to perform at a benefit rally for the union workers being laid off, donating $20,000 himself. 

"Let me be your soul driver": 1987 - 1995

Over the previous 14 years, as Springsteen crawled out of Freehold and into success and stardom, the conditions for the American working class had grown steadily worse. His increasing urgency in portraying blue collar desolation during that period shows an innate understanding of that new development, in spite of his own escape. By the end of Born In The U.S.A., Springsteen had arrived at a complex and difficult truth: You can’t change where you come from, and the lucky few who manage to escape their economic circumstances will always inherently be leaving a whole "town full of losers" — many of them family — behind. 

By the early 90’s Springsteen was living in Los Angeles with his family, and had unclenched his fists a little on the three solo albums (Tunnel of Love, Human Touch, Lucky Town) that followed Born In The U.S.A. In 1995, on the heels of his first Greatest Hits collection, Springsteen released The Ghost of Tom Joad — a spiritual sequel to Nebraska that applied its sense of stark isolation and themes of a broken American dream to stories that, in several cases, highlighted the experiences of undocumented immigrants.

The album won that year’s GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and proved just another dimension in the Boss’ legacy as an empathetic and unrelenting champion of the extraordinary bravery of ordinary folks persevering in thankless lives of hard work. Not long after, Springsteen decided to move back to New Jersey to raise his kids only a short drive away from where he grew up.  

"I am the nothing man": 2002-2014 

It would be seven years until Springsteen released his next album, The Rising, his first collaboration with the E Street Band in 18 years. Inspired by the September 11th attacks and at least one Asbury Park resident’s personal plea to Springsteen that "we need you now," The Rising intentionally finds a broader and more hopeful streak in its stories of ordinary people’s capacity for perseverance. 

Dense with simple and earnest affirmations ("we’re going to find a way" / "it’s going to be okay" / "I’m going to believe") that somehow manage never to feel naïve or condescending, Springsteen and the E Street Band begin to take a more deferential perspective. That view would continue through the aughts, as the band continued to look loss and destruction in the eye but reshift focus onto the immense bravery of their characters in the face of chaos and confusion. Though the band’s bleaker songs had certainly never lacked empathy, the determination to wear it more proudly on their sleeves in The Rising marked the beginning of a commercial and creative renaissance — one which  found Springsteen more comfortably inhabiting a role as a spokesperson for the ordinary people of an increasingly turbulent America.

During the 2004 Presidential election, Springsteen finally abandoned the pretense of separating his career and his partisan politics. He toured in support of Democratic nominee John Kerry; his 2005 solo album Devils and Dust empathizes, partly, with the disorienting experiences of soldiers fighting in the Iraq War; the next year, he used a record of Pete Seeger covers (We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions) to make his most opaque and comprehensive declaration of his populist political beliefs. 

2007’s Magic, a meditation on the erosion of personal freedoms in the Bush era, uses imagery of apocalyptic premonitions and magic tricks to tell stories about the inherent humanity of ignoring warning signs in an effort to believe someone who claims to have your best interests in mind. The complexity of that project — to characterize the era by attempting to empathize with, rather than denounce, the Americans who voted to re-elect Bush — feels perfectly Springsteenian in an era where political art was rapidly becoming the partisan battleground we continue to see today.

"We’ll meet at the house of a thousand guitars": 2019-present 

During the Obama era, Springsteen and the E Street Band released three albums that returned to familiar stories of working class perseverance, with an overall attitude of building back: Working On A Dream in 2009, Wrecking Ball in 2012, and High Hopes in 2014. Then after five years (his longest gap between albums since The Rising) he released an inspired and imaginative new highlight, Western Stars — a record written and arranged in the style of the orchestral country pop of Springsteen’s youth. 

This earnestness and more personal sense of nostalgia carried over into 2020’s Letters To You, an intimate and personal record inspired by the loss of longtime E Street Stalwarts Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici. In September 2022, Springsteen announced that his next record, Only The Strong Survive, would be a collection of cover songs from the classic songbook of his youth.

For any other artist of his stature and tenure, these nostalgic indulgences would probably indicate a sort of phoning-in — but for Springsteen they feel like a surprisingly immediate start to a new chapter. At worst, they’re a well-earned self-indulgence after countless albums of selfless advocacy and careful listening outside his own experiences; at best, they’re a reminder, after all that time, of his own deep and tightly-held ties back to the pantheon of characters in his songs. 

Either way, the path ahead is imminent proof of a career built on an organic ebb and flow of inspiration, imploring us to trust Springsteen in his pursuit and discovery of new forms of urgency and realism in his storytelling.

It wouldn’t be wild to argue that he’s earned that trust in his listeners. He is, after all, The Boss. 

Songbook: A Guide To Every Album By Guided By Voices' Current Lineup — So Far

Sharing mental health issues with close family or specialized medical professionals can be challenging enough. Add in the pressures of fame and being in the public eye, and any struggles are exponentially more difficult to cope with.

In recent years, though, mental health has become a much more widely discussed topic in celebrity culture. Several artists have used their music and their platform to open up about their own struggles with depression, anxiety and the like, from Bruce Springsteen to Selena Gomez.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month this May, GRAMMY.com highlights the inspirational impact of music superstars who speak out about what they're going through, and how they manage their challenges. These 10 performers are making change through their courage and candor.

Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran takes fans behind the curtain of his personal life and struggles with mental health in Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All. The four-episode docuseries, which is now streaming on Disney+, details the pain of losing his best friend Jamal Edwards and his wife Cherry Seaborn receiving a cancer diagnosis while she was pregnant with their daughter Jupiter.

"What I think is really great about the documentary is the themes that it explores, everyone goes through," Sheeran said at the New York City premiere on May 2, according to the Hollywood Reporter. "Everyone goes through grief. Everyone goes through ups and downs of their mental health."

Sheeran dives deeper into his struggles — and is more vulnerable than ever before — on his latest album Subtract, which arrived on May 5. "Running from the light/ Engulfed in darkness/ Sharing my eyes/ Wondering why I'm stuck on the borderline," he sings on album cut "Borderline," which touches on battling suicide thoughts.

Lewis Capaldi

Like Sheeran, Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi also gave fans an incredibly upfront look at his mental health challenges in a documentary, How I'm Feeling Now. The new Netflix release details his experience with anxiety and Tourette's syndrome, taking viewers to physical therapy with Capaldi and discussing how his medication both helps and hurts the quality of his life.

Capaldi's second album, Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent (due May 19) will further explore his anxieties and vulnerability. While he has admitted it wasn't easy to be so raw in his music and on screen, Capaldi wants to make a difference in other people's lives. "If people notice things that are concurrent with what's going on in their life, then it's all been worth it," he told Variety.

Billie Eilish

While Billie Eilish's music has been raw and real from the start, her music has become increasingly more vulnerable throughout the years. Whether in her music or in interviews, the star has opened up about dealing with body dysmorphia, depression and thoughts of self-harm — hoping to inspire fans to speak up when they are hurting, and to know that it gets better.

"It doesn't make you weak to ask for help," she asserts in a 2019 video for Ad Council's Seize The Awkward campaign, which features stars discussing mental health.

"Kids use my songs as a hug," she told Rolling Stone earlier that year. "Songs about being depressed or suicidal or completely just against-yourself — some adults think that's bad, but I feel that seeing that someone else feels just as horrible as you do is a comfort. It's a good feeling."

Selena Gomez

As one of the most-followed stars on social media, Selena Gomez has often used her formidable presence to discuss her mental health and connect with others. In 2022, the singer launched a startup called Wondermind, which is focused on "mental fitness" and helping users maintain strong mental health.

Just a few months later, Gomez further chronicled her own mental health journey in an Apple TV+ documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me, which shows extremes she's suffered with her depression and bipolar disorder. She has said she was initially hesitant to share the film, but ultimately reflected on how many others could be helped if she did.

"Because I have the platform I have, it's kind of like I'm sacrificing myself a little bit for a greater purpose," she explained in a 2022 cover story with Rolling Stone. "I don't want that to sound dramatic, but I almost wasn't going to put this out. God's honest truth, a few weeks ago, I wasn't sure I could do it."

Shawn Mendes

In 2019, Shawn Mendes first publicly addressed his struggles with anxiety in the dynamic — and GRAMMY-nominated — hit "In My Blood." Three years later, the singer postponed his 2022 tour in order to focus on his mental health, opening up an important conversation to his legion of fans.

"The process was very difficult," he said in a February interview with Wall Street Journal. "A lot of doing therapy, a lot of trying to understand how I was feeling and what was making me feel that way. And then doing the work to help myself and heal. And also leaning on people in my life to help a little bit. 

"It's been a lot of work, but I think the last year and a half has been the most eye-opening and growing and beautiful and just healing process of my life," he continued. "And it just really made me see how culture is really starting to get to a place where mental health is really becoming a priority."

Bruce Springsteen

Even an artist as successful and celebrated as Bruce Springsteen has faced depression. In his 2016 autobiography Born to Run, the 20-time GRAMMY winner cites a difficult relationship with his father and a history of mental illness in the family, sharing that he has sought treatment throughout his life.

"I was crushed between 60 and 62, good for a year, and out again from 63 to 64," he wrote in the book. In that time, he released his 2012 album, Wrecking Ball, which featured a raw track called "This Depression." "Baby, I've been down, but never this down I've been lost, but never this lost," he sings on the opening verse.

As his wife, Patti Scialfa, told Vanity Fair in 2016, "He approached the book the way he would approach writing a song…A lot of his work comes from him trying to overcome that part of himself."

Janet Jackson

The physical and emotional abuse suffered by the famous Jackson family is well-documented in books, documentaries and TV dramatizations. But it's only been in recent years that Janet Jackson has talked about her own depression, which she has referred to as "intense." Her son Aissa has helped her heal from mental health challenges that have followed her all of her life.

"In my 40s, like millions of women in the world, I still heard voices inside my head berating me, voices questioning my value," she wrote in a 2020 ESSENCE cover story. "Happiness was elusive. A reunion with old friends might make me happy. A call from a colleague might make me happy. But because sometimes I saw my failed relationships as my fault, I easily fell into despair."

Elle King

After seeing global success with her debut single, "Ex's & Oh's," Elle King experienced the woes of sudden fame as well as a crumbling marriage. Her second album, 2018's Shake the Spirit, documented her struggles with self-doubt, medicinal drinking and PTSD.

"There's two ways out," she told PEOPLE in 2018, describing her marriage as "destructive," physically abusive and leading her to addiction. "You can take the bad way out or you can get help. I got help because I knew that I have felt good in my life and I knew I could get there again."

Brendon Urie

Certain public situations can trigger crippling anxiety attacks for Brendon Urie, who has been open about mental health concerns throughout his career. He can perform in front of thousands of fans, but he's revealed that being in the grocery store or stuck in an elevator for too long with other people are among some of his most uncomfortable scenarios in his life.

"You would never tell on the surface, but inside it's so painful I can't even describe," the former Panic! At The Disco frontman — who disbanded the group earlier this year to focus on his family — said in a 2016 interview with Kerrang.

Big Sean

Rapper Big Sean and his mother released a series of educational videos during Mental Health Awareness Month in 2021 — two years after the Detroit-born star started talking about his own long-held depression and anxiety publicly.

"I was just keeping it real because I was tired of not keeping it real," he said in an interview with ESSENCE in 2021. "I was tired of pretending I was a machine and everything was cool and being politically correct or whatever. I just was like, I'm a just say how I feel."

Like many of his peers, he hopes that his honesty will help others. "Whatever they can apply to their life and better themselves and maybe it just even starts a whole journey in a different direction as far as upgrading and taking care of themselves and bossing up themselves," he added. "Whatever they're trying to do, I hope it helps them get to that place."

How Durand Jones' Debut Album 'Wait Til I Get Over' Helped Him Explore His Roots & Find Self-Acceptance

Over the span of fifteen years, Bruce Springsteen received four nominations and two wins for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. He missed the ceremony for his first win in 1985 for "Dancing in the Dark," but he made up for it in 1995, thanks to "Streets of Philadelphia."

In this episode of GRAMMY Rewind, revisit Springsteen's second win for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, 10 years after his first victory.

"Not sure this is a rock vocal, but you stick around long enough, and they give these things to you, I guess," Springsteen quipped.

"Gee, I actually won this a few years ago. They gave it out in the afternoon, and I missed it," Springsteen continued with a smile. "They sent it to my mom, and she presented it to me over the kitchen table."

That wasn't the only trophy Springsteen accepted that night, either: "Streets of Philadelphia" nearly made a clean sweep at the 1995 GRAMMYs, winning four of the five categories it was nominated in. The song also won golden gramophones for Best Rock Song, Best Song Written For Visual Media and the coveted Song Of The Year.

Press play on the video above to watch Bruce Springsteen's complete acceptance speech for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance at the 37th GRAMMY Awards, and check back to GRAMMY.com for more episodes of GRAMMY Rewind.

Bruce Springsteen Essentials: 15 Tracks That Show Why The Boss Is A Poetic Rock Icon

Updated Monday, May 22, to include information about the re-air date for "A GRAMMY Salute To The Beach Boys."

"A GRAMMY Salute To The Beach Boys" will re-air on Monday, May 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the CBS Television Network, and will be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

When talk turns to the history of American pop vocal groups in the 20th century, the conversation begins — and ends — with the Beach Boys. These California siblings and their high school compadres reinvented modern music, taking listeners on a sonic journey with their melodic harmony-rich hits. More than 60 years on, the group is still considered a touchstone for today’s artists and the pinnacle of pop.  

The Beach Boys formed in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne in 1961. The original lineup featured the three Wilson brothers (Dennis, Brian and Carl), cousin Mike Love and high-school friend Al Jardine. Initially, Murry Wilson (the siblings father) managed the group and helped land their first paying gig: opening for Ike and Tina Turner at the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance in Long Beach on New Year’s Eve 1961. 

It was an auspicious start to the year. That summer, the teenage quintet with a joie de vivre and a love of sun, surf, and sand signed to Capitol Records. The major label deal followed  the success of their first two singles: "Surfin,’" which reached No. 3 on West Coast regional charts and sold 40,000 copies,  and "Surfin’ Safari." The band’s debut full-length, Surfin’ Safari, climbed all the way to No. 32 on the Billboard charts. 

The Beach Boys sophomore release, Surfin’ U.S.A., came out less than six months after their debut and saw Brian Wilson experimenting more with innovative studio techniques like double-tracking vocals. The album hit No. 2 on the Billboard charts — but the band's success and innovation had far from peaked. 

1964's All Summer Long capped a year when the group played more than 100 shows around the world and recorded all or parts of four albums,  largely leaving the beachy parts of their sound behind in favor of new sonic textures and more personal  lyrics. Released in May 1966, Pet Sounds was the high point of this experimentation and cemented  the group as innovators. The intricately arranged concept album peaked at No. 10 in the U.S., but reached second spot in the British charts. The record came to represent the future possibilities of pop and signaled a shift in music-making and studio wizardry. Today, it’s considered one of the most influential albums of the 20th century due to its pioneering production and introspective lyrics. 

Dozens of artists have covered the album’s most well-known song: "God Only Knows," including: Glen Campbell, David Bowie, Olivia Newton-John and Wilson Phillips. Graham Nash cites "God Only Knows" as a significant inspiration to him when first learning the craft of writing songs.  

All told, the Beach Boys released 29 studio albums, 11 live recordings and dozens upon dozens of compilations. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and they have been nominated for four GRAMMY Awards. The band have impacted everyone from contemporaries like the Beatles to current indie-folk rockers Fleet Foxes. Beyond commercial success — more than 100 million records sold, four No.1 Billboard hits and more than 33 Platinum and Gold Records (the greatest hits album Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of the Beach Boys sold three million copies alone) — there are few genres these California kids have not had an influence on over the past six decades. 

In advance of the re-airing of the television special "A GRAMMY Salute to The Beach Boys" on Monday, May 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS — which features Beck, Brandi Carlile, Fall Out Boy, Norah Jones, John Legend, Michael McDonald, Weezer, Charlie Puth and Mumford & Sons —  GRAMMY.com shines a light on seven artists who count these sweet-singing melody-making trailblazers as essential to their musical education.

Read More: How To Watch "A GRAMMY Salute To The Beach Boys," Featuring Performances From John Legend, Brandi Carlile, Beck, Fall Out Boy, Mumford & Sons, LeAnn Rimes, Weezer & More

The Beatles

Listen to the vocal harmonies in songs like "Paperback Writer" and the complex arrangements, orchestration and time-shifts on "A Day in the Life" and try not to hear the sonic similarities. Pet Sounds came out the year before the GRAMMY-winning Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and early demos and acetates of the album ended up in the hands of the British band. Paul McCartney is also on record saying: "God Only Knows" is the greatest song ever written and he cries every time he hears it.  

George Martin, the "fifth Beatle" and GRAMMY-winning producer who was the studio architect of some of the Fab Four’s biggest albums, heralded Wilson and acknowledged the Beach Boys' influence on Sgt. Pepper’s. "Brian is a living genius of pop music. Like the Beatles, he pushed forward the frontiers of popular music," Martin says in Charles L Granata’s book Brian Wilson And The Making Of Pet Sounds.

Bruce Springsteen 

"There’s no greater world created in rock and roll than the Beach Boys, the level of musicianship, I don’t think anybody’s touched it yet," Bruce Springsteen said in the documentary Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.

Listen to "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" from 2007s Magic, which sonically could have easily fit on Pet Sounds 40 years earlier. Or put on your headphones and zone out to "Hungry Heart," the Boss’ first top 10 hit and try not to hear the Beach Boys' influence in the arrangement. In the documentary, Springsteen praises Wilson, his friend and musical mentor: "[He] just took you out of where you were and took you to another place."  

The Ramones

Surf-rock influencing punk-rock? You bet. The Ramones were well aware of, and influenced by, the SoCal music movement of the 1960s when they exploded onto the burgeoning punk scene in 1974. 

The Beach Boys were one of the messiahs from the past they worshiped and looked to while crafting some of their most enduring punk rock anthems. "Rockaway Beach" was penned by bassist Dee Dee Ramone to mimic the style of the Beach Boys earliest surf-rock hits, but was sped up to match the punk rockers energy. Many of the Ramones’s song titles and lyrics — just like the California group — clung to the innocence of youth and name-dropped local attractions and experiences that kids growing up in the boroughs understood. 

Take these lines from: “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” : “I’d rather stay here in my room/ Nothin’ out there but sad and gloom/ I don’t want to live in a big old tomb on Grand Street.” Remind you of the pensive “In My Room” perhaps? Or, how about "Oh Oh I Love Her So," from Leave Home? Joey Ramone sings of falling in love by a soda machine and then riding the coaster with his girl down at Coney Island all night long. The song even ends with a surf-rock riff.

Weezer 

Not long after moving from the East Coast to Los Angeles, Weezer’s lead singer and songwriter Rivers Cuomo bought a copy of Pet Sounds. The album would go on to influence the early days of the alternative-rock band and Cuomo’s approach to songwriting, especially on their self-titled debut. 

Weezer once covered the Beach Boys' "Don’t Worry Baby" and, on the GRAMMY-nominated Pacific Daydream (2017) there’s a song called "Beach Boys." In an interview, Cuomo reflected on Wilson’s wide-ranging, everlasting influence: "To me, he’s one of the standout talents of the century or of our culture. I think I’m a pea in comparison. But I certainly emulate him as do countless others." On the forthcoming GRAMMY salute to the Beach Boys, Weezer covers "California Girls."

Fleet Foxes

While his friends were studying algebra, a teenage Robin Pecknold was studying The Beach Boys — specifically how they created their complex stacked harmonies. This musical education began the foundation for his band Fleet Foxes and their approach to harmonizing and making music. In this interview on Brian Wilson’s website, the songwriter refers to the Beach Boys music as his "textbooks." "My parents bought me a four track for my1 5th birthday and I would practice stacking harmonies for hours on end," he recalled.

From the layered harmonies that open "Sun it Rises," the first track on the band’s self-titled 2008 debut, and the intricate orchestration that follows, the Beach Boys comparison is evident. Pecknold acknowledges this influence in the liner notes, writing: "Whenever I hear 'Feel Flows' by the Beach Boys, I’m taken straight to the back of my parents’ car on the way to my grandparents’ place, fourteen with Surf’s Up in my walkman and the Cascade Mountains going by in the window." 

In that same interview posted on Wilson’s website, Peckhold raved about Brian Wilson's influence on him as a young musician. "I remember being so driven as a teenager by how much amazing music Brian made in his early 20s. That he was such a prodigious master of his craft, making Pet Sounds at the astounding age of 23, always pushed me to get as good as I could as a musician, as soon as I could," Peckhold reflected. "But at some point I accepted that haste is no substitute for brilliance, there is only one Brian Wilson." 

And, if this is not proof enough, Fleet Foxes sampled Wilson’s voice from "Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" on the song "Cradling Mother, Cradling Woman" on 2020s GRAMMY-nominated Shore. 

Phoenix

The French synth-rock quartet that formed in 1995 show how the Beach Boys' influence spans not only generations, but borders. This admiration for the California soft-rock sounds of the 1960s and harmonious pop is most apparent on the GRAMMY-winning band’s sixth album: Ti Amo. Just like Pet Sounds, these cerebral musicians mine the depths of human emotions on this record and find the spaces in between to shed light on what we all feel. In this piece, Phoenix discusses how Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys influenced the sunny sounds of this 2017 record that is a love letter to Europe.    

The Sha La Das

Family harmonies? Check. Summer vibes? Check. Led by father Bill Schalda and featuring the sibling sounds of his three sons — Will, Paul and Carmine — this band hail from Staten Island. Growing up, the brothers often sang on the front stoop with Bill providing guidance. Later, they sang backup on the late Charles Bradley’s Victim of Love. 

Listen to the old-soul and do-wop of "Summer Breeze" from the band’s 2018 debut Love in the Wind and you are transported to southern California, circa 1961, and the first time the sunny sounds of the Beach Boys came across the airwaves. 

5 Memorable Highlights From "A GRAMMY Salute To The Beach Boys": Weezer, St. Vincent, John Legend & More

Fifty years ago, a record-breaking 600,000 people gathered to see the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band and the Band play Summer Jam at Watkins Glen. This is just one of many significant historical events that happened in 1973 — a year that changed the way music was seen, heard and experienced.

Ongoing advancements in music-making tech expanded the sound of popular and underground music. New multi-track technology was now standard in recording studios from Los Angeles to London. Artists from a variety of genres experimented with new synthesizers, gadgets like the Mu-Tron III pedal and the Heil Talk Box, and techniques like the use of found sounds.  

1973 was also a year of new notables, where now-household names made their debuts. Among these auspicious entries: a blue-collar songwriter from the Jersey Shore, hard-working southern rockers from Jacksonville, Fla. and a sister group from California oozing soul. 

Along a well-established format, '73 saw the release of several revolutionary concept records. The Eagles’ Desperado, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Lou Reed’s Berlin and the Who’s Quadrophenia are just a few examples that illustrate how artists used narrative techniques to explore broader themes and make bigger statements on social, political and economic issues — of which there were many.

On the domestic front, 1973 began with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Roe v. Wade. Internationally, the Paris Peace Accords were signed — starting the long process to end the Vietnam War. An Oil crisis caused fuel prices to skyrocket in North America. Richard Nixon started his short-lived second term as president, which was marked by the Watergate scandal. 

Politics aside, the third year of the '70s had it all: from classic- and southern-rock to reggae; punk to jazz; soul and R&B to country. Read on for 20 masterful albums with something to say that celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2023. 

Band On The Run - Paul McCartney & Wings

Laid down at EMI’s studio in Lagos, Nigeria and released in December 1973, the third studio record by Paul Mcartney & Wings is McCartney’s most successful post-Beatles album. Its hit singles "Jet" and the title cut "Band on the Run" helped make the record the biggest-selling in 1974 in both Australia and Canada.

Band on the Run won a pair of GRAMMYS the following year: Best Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical. McCartney added a third golden gramophone for this record at the 54th awards celebration when it won Best Historical Album for the 2010 reissue. In 2013, Band on the Run was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame. 

Head Hunters - Herbie Hancock

Released Oct. 13, Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters was recorded in just one week; its

four songs clock in at just over 40 minutes. That the album was not nominated in the jazz category, but instead Best Pop Instrumental Performance, demonstrates how Hancock was shifting gears.

Head Hunters showed Hancock moving away from traditional instrumentation and playing around with new synthesizer technology — especially the clavinet — and putting together a new band: the Headhunters. Improvisation marks this as a jazz record, but the phrasing, rhythms and dynamics of Hancock’s new quintet makes it equal parts soul and R&B with sprinkles of rock 'n' roll. 

The album represented a commercial and artistic breakthrough for Hancock, going gold within months of its release. "Watermelon Man" and "Chameleon," which was nominated for a Best Instrumental GRAMMY Award in 1974, were later both frequently sampled by hip-hop artists in the 1990s.

Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. - Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen, 22, was the new kid in town in 1973. This debut was met with tepid reviews. Still, Greetings introduced Springsteen’s talent to craft stories in song and includes many characters The Boss would return to repeatedly in his career. The album kicks off with the singalong "Blinded by the Light," which reached No. 1 on the Billboard 100 four years later via a cover done by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. This was the first of two records Springsteen released in 1973; The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle arrived before the end of the year — officially introducing the E Street Band.

Innervisions - Stevie Wonder 

This Stevie Wonder masterpiece shows an artist, in his early 20s, experimenting with new instrumentation such as TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra) — the world’s largest synth — and playing all instruments on the now-anthemic "Higher Ground."

The song reached No.1 on the U.S. Hot R&B Singles Chart, and Innervisions peaked at No. 4. The album won three GRAMMYS the following year, including Album Of The Year. Wonder was the first Black artist to win this coveted golden gramophone. In 1989, Red Hot Chili Peppers kept the original funk, but injected the song with a lot of rock on their cover — the lead single from Mother’s Milk.

The Dark Side Of The Moon - Pink Floyd

Critics perennially place this Pink Floyd album, the band's eighth studio record, as one of the greatest of all-time. The Dark Side of the Moon hit No.1 and stayed on the Billboard charts for 63 weeks.

A sonic masterpiece marked by loops, synths, found sounds, and David Gilmour’s guitar bends, Dark Side of the Moon is also a concept record that explores themes of excessive greed on tracks like "Money." Ironically, an album lambasting consumerism was the top-selling record of the year and has eclipsed 45 million sales worldwide since its release. The album’s cover has also become one of the most recognized in the history of popular music.

Pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd - Lynyrd Skynyrd

This debut release features several of the northern Florida rockers' most beloved songs: "Gimme Three Steps," "Tuesday’s Gone" and "Simple Man." The record, which has since reached two-times platinum status with sales of more than two million, also includes the anthemic "Free Bird," which catapulted them to stardom. The song with its slow-build and definitive guitar solo and jam in the middle became Lynyrd Skynyrd's signature song that ended all their shows; it also became a piece of pop culture with people screaming for this song during concerts by other artists.

Houses Of The Holy - Led Zeppelin

The first Led Zeppelin record of all originals — and the first without a Roman numeral for a title — Houses of the Holy shows a new side of these British hardrockers. Straying from the blues and hard rock of previous records, Houses of the Holy features funk (“The Ocean” and “The Crunge”) and even hints of reggae (“D’Yer Mak’er”). This fifth studio offering from Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham also includes one of this writer’s personal Zeppelin favorites — "Over the Hills and Far Away.” The song was released as the album’s first U.S. single and reached No. 51 on the Billboard charts. Despite mixed reviews from critics, Houses of the Holy eventually achieved Diamond status for sales of more than 10 million. Interesting fact: the song “Houses of the Holy” actually appears on the band’s next record (Physical Graffiti).

Quadrophenia - The Who

The double-album rock opera followed the critical success of Tommy and Who’s Next. Pete Townshend composed all songs on this opus, which was later adapted into a movie. And, in 2015, classically-scored by Townshend’s partner Rachel Fuller for a new generation via a symphonic version (“Classic Quadrophenia”). The story chronicles the life of a young mod named Jimmy who lives in the seaside town of Brighton, England. Jimmy searches for meaning in a life devoid of significance — taking uppers, downers and guzzling gin only to discover nothing fixes his malaise. With sharp-witted songs, Townshend also tackles classicism. His band of musical brothers: Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and Keith Moon provide some of their finest recorded performances. The album reached second spot on the U.S. Billboard chart.

Berlin - Lou Reed

Produced by Bob Ezrin, Berlin is a metaphor. The divided walled city represents the divisive relationships and the two sides of Reed — on stage and off. The 10 track concept record chronicles a couple’s struggles with drug addiction, meditating on themes of domestic abuse and neglect. As a parent, try to listen to "The Kids" without shedding a tear. While the couple on the record are named Caroline and Jim, those who knew Reed’s volatile nature and drug dependency saw the parallels between this fictionalized narrative and the songwriter’s life.

Catch A Fire - Bob Marley & the Wailers

The original cover was enclosed in a sleeve resembling a Zippo lighter. Only 20,000 of this version were pressed. Even though it was creative and cool, cost-effective it was not — each individual cover had to be hand-riveted. The replacement, which most people know today, introduces reggae poet and prophet Robert Nesta Marley to the world. With a pensive stare and a large spliff in hand, Marley tells you to mellow out and listen to the tough sounds of his island home.

While Bob and his Wailers had been making music for nearly a decade and released several records in Jamaica, Catch a Fire was their coming out party outside the Caribbean. Released in April on Island Records, the feel-good reggae rhythms and Marley’s messages of emancipation resonated with a global audience. A mix of songs of protest ("Slave Driver," "400 years") and love ("Kinky Reggae"), Catch A Fire is also notable for "Stir it Up," a song American singer-songwriter Johnny Nash had made a Top 15 hit the previous year. 

The New York Dolls - The New York Dolls

The New York Dolls burst on the club scene in the Big Apple, building a cult following with their frenetic and unpredictable live shows. The Dolls' hard rock sound and f-you attitude waved the punk banner before the genre was coined, and influenced the sound of punk rock for generations. (Bands like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and KISS, cite the New York Dolls as mentors.) Singer-songwriter Todd Rundgren — who found time to release A Wizard, A True Star this same year — produced this tour de force. From the opening "Personality Crisis," this five-piece beckons you to join this out-of-control train.

Aladdin Sane - David Bowie

This David Bowie record followed the commercial success of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders from Mars. Many critics unfairly compare the two. A career chameleon, with Aladdin Sane, Bowie shed the Ziggy persona and adopted another alter-ego. The title is a pun that means: "A Lad Insane." For the songwriter, this record represented an attempt to break free from the crazed fandom Ziggy Stardust had created.

A majority of the songs were written the previous year while Bowie toured the United States in support of Ziggy. Journal in hand, the artist traveled from city to city in America and the songs materialized. Most paid homage to what this “insane lad” observed and heard: from debauchery and societal decay ("Cracked Actor") to politics ("Panic in Detroit") to punk music ("Watch That Man"). Top singles on Aladdin Sane were: "The Jean Genie" and "Drive-In Saturday." Both topped the U.K. charts.

Faust IV -Faust

This fourth studio album — and the final release in this incarnation by this experimental avant-garde German ambient band — remains a cult classic. Recorded at the Manor House in Oxfordshire, England (Richard Branson’s new Virgin Records studio and the locale where Mike Oldfield crafted his famous debut Tubular Bells, also released in 1973), Faust IV opens with the epic 11-minute instrumental "Krautrock" — a song that features drones, clusters of tones and sustained notes to create a trance-like vibe. Drums do not appear in the song until after the seven minute mark.

The song is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the genre British journalists coined to describe bands like Faust, which musicians largely did not embrace. The rest of Faust IV is a sonic exploration worthy of repeated listens and a great place to start if you’ve ever wondered what the heck Krautrock is.

Brothers & Sisters - the Allman Brothers Band

Great art is often born from grief, and Brothers & Sisters is exemplary in this way. Founding member Duanne Allman died in 1971 and bassist Berry Oakley followed his bandmate to the grave a year later; he was killed in a motorcycle accident in November 1972. Following this pair of tragedies, the band carried on the only way they knew how: by making music.

With new members hired, Brothers & Sisters was recorded with guitarist Dicky Betts as the new de facto band leader. The Allman Brothers Band’s most commercially successful record leans into country territory from the southern rock of previous releases and features two of the band’s most popular songs: "Ramblin’ Man" and "Jessica." The album went gold within 48 hours of shipping and since has sold more than seven million copies worldwide.  

Call Me -  Al Green

Call Me is considered one of the greatest soul records of the 20th century and Green’s pièce de résistance. The fact this Al Green album features three Top 10 Billboard singles — "You Ought to Be With Me," "Here I Am" and the title track — helps explain why it remains a masterpiece. Beyond the trio of hits, the soul king shows his versatility by reworking a pair of country songs: Hank Williams’ "I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry," and Willie Nelson’s "Funny How Time Slips Away."

Killing Me Softly - Roberta Flack

This Roberta Flack album was nominated for three GRAMMY Awards and won two: Record Of The Year and Best Female Vocal Pop Performance at the 1974 GRAMMYs (it lost in the Album of the Year category to Innervisions). With equal parts soul and passion, Flack interprets beloved ballads that showcase her talent of taking others’ songs and reinventing them. Producer Joel Dorn assembled the right mix of players to back up Flack — adding to the album’s polished sound. Killing Me Softly has sold more than two million copies and, in 2020, Roberta Flack received the GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award.

The album's title cut became a No.1 hit in three countries and, in 1996, the Fugees prominently featured Lauryn Hill on a version that surpassed the original: landing the No.1 spot in 21 countries. The album also includes a pair of well-loved covers: Leonard Cohen’s "Suzanne" and Janis Ian’s wistful "Jesse," which reached No. 30.

Bette Midler - Bette Middler

Co-produced by Arif Mardin and Barry Manilow, the self-titled second studio album by Bette Midler was an easy- listening experience featuring interpretations of both standards and popular songs. Whispers of gospel are mixed with R&B and some boogie-woogie piano, though Midler’s voice is always the star. The record opens with a nod to the Great American Songbook with a reworking of Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael’s "Skylark." The 10-song collection also features a take on Glenn Miller’s "In the Mood," and a divine cover of Bob Dylan’s "I Shall be Released." The record peaked at No. 6 on the U.S. charts.

Imagination - Gladys Knight & the Pips

Released in October, Imagination was Gladys Knight & the Pips' first album with Buddha Records after leaving Motown, and features the group’s only No. 1 Billboard hit:  "Midnight Train to Georgia." The oft-covered tune, which won a GRAMMY the following year, and became the band’s signature, helped the record eclipse a million in sales, but it was not the only single to resonate. Other timeless, chart-topping songs from Imagination include "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me," and "I’ve Got to Use My Imagination."

The Pointer Sisters - The Pointer Sisters

The three-time GRAMMY-winning Pointer Sisters arrived on the scene in 1973 with this critically-acclaimed self-titled debut. Then a quartet, the group of sisters from Oakland, California made listeners want to shake a tail feather with 10 songs that ranged from boogie-woogie to bebop. Their sisterly harmonies are backed up by the San Francisco blues-funk band the Hoodoo Rhythm Devils. The record opens with "Yes We Can," a hypnotic groove of a song written by Allen Toussaint which was a Top 15 hit alongside another cover, Willie Dixon’s "Wang Dang Doodle."

Behind Closed Doors - Charlie Rich

This pop-leaning country record of orchestral ballads, produced by Billy Sherrill, made Rich rich. The album has surpassed four million in sales and remains one of the genre’s best-loved classics. The album won Charlie Rich a GRAMMY the following year for Best Country Vocal Performance Male and added four Country Music Awards. Behind Closed Doors had several hits, but the title track made the most impact. The song written by Kenny O’Dell, and whose title was inspired by the Watergate scandal, was the first No.1 hit for Rich. It topped the country charts where it spent 20 weeks in 1973. It was also a Billboard crossover hit — reaching No. 15 on the Top 100 and No. 8 on the Adult Contemporary charts.

1972 Was The Most Badass Year In Latin Music: 11 Essential Albums From Willie Colón, Celia Cruz, Juan Gabriel & Others