Bruce Springsteen took a page out of the Taylor Swift playbook by dropping a video for his new single, “Hello Sunshine,” onto the Internet exactly at midnight. Springsteen doesn’t appear in the video, which shows an old car with New Jersey plates traveling through the desert.
He spent all week teasing this release with cryptic photos of desert landscapes on his social media accounts, and on Thursday morning he revealed that his new LP Western Stars – his first album of new, original songs since 2012’s Wrecking Ball – would come out on June 14th.
“This record is a return to my solo recordings featuring character driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements,” Springsteen said in a statement. “It’s a jewel box of a record.”
The album was inspired by Sixties/Seventies California pop artists like Burt Bacharach and Glen Campbell, and the influence is very evident on “Hello Sunshine,” which is very much in the same vein as classics like “Wichita Lineman” and “Everybody’s Talkin’.”
“I don’t know if people will hear those influences, but that was what I had in my mind,” Springsteen told Variety in December. “It gave me something to hook an album around; it gave me some inspiration to write. And also, it’s a singer-songwriter record. It’s connected to my solo records writing-wise, more Tunnel of Love and Devils & Dust, but it’s not like them at all. Just different characters living their lives.”
Western Stars was produced by Ron Aniello and features contributions by founding E Street Band keyboardist David Sancious and Soozie Tyrell and Charlie Giordano of the current incarnation of the group. Springsteen has yet to indicate if he plans on touring in support of Western Stars, though he’s put in road work for every album of his career, with the exception of 1982’s Nebraska.