Bruce Springsteen has released a lyric video for “I’ll Stand By You,” a previously unreleased song that appears in the new movie Blinded By The Light. The visual features the lyrics from the song along with scenes from the movie, which is about a Pakistani teenager growing up in 1987 Britain who falls under the spell of Springsteen’s music.
Springsteen wrote “I’ll Stand By You” at some point in the late 1990s or early 2000s, inspired by the Harry Potter books he was reading to his young children. He recorded it in 2001 and offered it to director Christopher Columbus as he was filming Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It was rejected because J.K. Rowling’s contract said that no commercial songs could be used in the film; the entire soundtrack is composed of John Williams’ score for the movie.
“It was pretty good, it was a song I wrote for my eldest son, it was a big ballad that was very uncharacteristic of something I’d sing myself,” Springsteen said in 2016. “But it was something that I thought would have fit lovely. At some point I’d like to get it into a children’s movie of some sort because it was a pretty lovely song.”
“Ill Stand By You” is the only unreleased Springsteen on the soundtrack, but it also includes rarities like “The River” like at the Madison Square Garden No Nukes concert in 1979, an acoustic “The Promised Land” live on the National Mall in Washington DC in 2014 and “Thunder Road” live at L.A.’s Roxy Theater in October 1974.
Springsteen made a surprise appearance at the Asbury Park, New Jersey premiere of Blinded By the Light where he performed a four-song set with Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes. His future plans are somewhat vague, though he’s said he has written songs for a new E Street Band album that he hopes to release in 2020 and then tour behind.