Why is "Father's Day" an "orphan" of TRACKS II?

Douglas Springsteen, circa 1960, as seen in the 2021 book RENEGADES: BORN IN THE USA, co-written by Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen

June 15, 2025

"During the pandemic," Bruce Springsteen stated in the official trailer for Tracks II: The Lost Albums, "what I did for that period of time was I finished everything I had in my vault." Well, Bruce, I sure hope that doesn't mean that "Father's Day," which didn't make the cut for Tracks II, will remain in that vault for a long time to come.

On April 12, 2017, I got to hear "Father's Day" at the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C., along with two friends: filmmaker Nick Mead (Swing, Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am?, A Thousand Guitars, I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol, etc.) and Backstreets magazine/website editor/publisher Chris Phillips. Almost a decade later, the three of us still agree that we heard something very special that day.

I wrote about the experience at Backstreets.com in a report published on Father's Day 2017. You can click here to read my archived report. At that time I described "Father's Day" as "a powerful rocker, built around scorching guitars and pounding drums that bring the noise before Bruce sings a note and continue to do so well after his singing stops...Bruce and whoever else accompanied him clearly brought their best game. On the basis of the music alone, this track ranks with other great long-unreleased Springsteen rockers of the past like 'Roulette' and 'Murder Incorporated.' (Here's hoping it eventually receives an official release, as those tracks eventually did.)" I also added that even within the limitations of the Copyright Office listening experience, in which not every detail regarding the characters and situations depicted in the song could be understood in detail, "it certainly doesn't sound like anyone's having a very happy Father's Day. The song seems to be exploring the impact of fathers who are absent, either physically or emotionally or both."

I have no idea why Springsteen fans won't be able to hear "Father's Day" onTracks II after it drops two weeks from now on June 27. Perhaps since Tracks II is built around a "lost" full-length albums concept rather than the comparatively more loosely organized collection of studio outtakes that was the original 1998 Tracks box-set, it was just too difficult to find a fitting spot for "Father's Day" on any of the seven "lost" albums that constitute Tracks II'. As my archived Backstreets.com report noted, on the same date that Bruce submitted "Father's Day" to the U.S. Copyright Office - April 7, 1995 - he also submitted "Between Heaven and Earth" and "Blind Spot," two tracks that will be included on the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions album of Tracks II, but even if "Father's Day" was recorded during the same period that tracks like "Between Heaven and Earth" and "Blind Spot" were, it doesn't share any significant sonic similarities with those two tracks or presumably the rest of the material on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions. Perhaps it was considered instead for possible inclusion on the Perfect World album of Tracks II, which we already know was newly assembled using various tracks from the mid-1990s through 2018. But again as we also know already, for whatever reason(s,) "Father's Day" will be nowhere to be found on Tracks II.

There's another intriguing possibility to consider, as long as we're just speculating... Perhaps later this year, "Father's Day" could be included on the soundtrack of Deliver Me From Nowhere, the Springsteen biopic that will be released next October. After all, with Bruce's relationship with his own father apparently being a strong plot element of the film, perhaps "Father's Day" could serve as closing-credits music and/or somewhere else on the soundtrack, especially since the song's subject has to do with father-relationships that are... er, less than ideal.

In any case, here's hoping that "Father's Day" eventually gets an official release of some type, and much sooner than a few more decades from now. After all, to these ears and to those of some friends of mine, as well, it sounds just too good to remain "orphaned" by its father, getting heard pretty much only by those fans willing and able to make the trek to D.C.

Happy Father's Day 2025 to all who are celebrating it today!

-Special thanks to Nick Mead and Chris Philips