Bruce Springsteen's Make-or-Break Third Album

As the founder and president of MLE Merchandising & Sign Solutions, Mike Loftus has grown the company from an Illinois startup to a 14-state company that employs more than 100 people. When he isn't focused on overseeing all divisions of MLE, Mike Loftus enjoys listening to one of his favorite musicians, Bruce Springsteen.

It's hard to remember Springsteen as anything but a rock legend, but in fact he didn't attain that status until his third album, Born to Run. Though the New Jersey singer and songwriter was hailed as the next Bob Dylan by Columbia Records' John Hammond, Springsteen's first two albums - Greetings From Ashbury Park, NJ and The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle - didn't sell enough to convince the company that he was going to be the massive star he eventually became. However, Springsteen changed the narrative with Born to Run and his incredibly-reviewed live shows, which were lauded by Rolling Stone magazine. One of the magazine's contributors, Jon Landau, wrote: "I have seen rock n’ roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen."

He debuted the album's title track at a live show in June of 1974 and it played on a Philadelphia radio station in November of that year, nine months before the album's official release. After a 14-month recording period, Springsteen released the album in August of 1975 and it subsequently made him the star Columbia thought he would become, as he landed on the covers of Newsweek and Time. The album reached triple-platinum status in 1986.