The Ghost of Tom Joad is the eleventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, released on November 21, 1995, by Columbia Records. His second primarily acoustic album after Nebraska (1982), The Ghost of Tom Joad reached the top ten in two countries, and the top twenty in five more, including No. 11 in the United States. It was his first studio album to fail to reach the top ten in the US in over two decades. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
Springsteen wrote and recorded the album between March and September, 1995, at Thrill Hill West, his home studio in Los Angeles, California. Following that year's studio reunion with the E Street Band and the release of Greatest Hits, Springsteen's writing activity had increased significantly, resulting in this album, which consists of seven solo tracks and five band tracks.
The Ghost of Tom Joad debuted at number eleven on the US Billboard 200 chart, with 107,000 copies sold in its first week.[3] However, it broke a string of eight consecutive Top 5 studio albums in the United States for Springsteen.[4] The album won the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
The Ghost of Tom Joad received mostly favorable reviews, but also drew some sharp criticism. Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone called it "Springsteen's best album in ten years," and considered it "among the bravest work that anyone has given us this decade."[13] He characterised it as Springsteen's "first overtly social statement since Born in the U.S.A.", and as having "an obvious kinship with Springsteen’s 1982 masterwork, Nebraska", the artist's first acoustic album. Bill Wyman of The Chicago Reader expressed disappointment that "Springsteen can be so literal that it's hard to appreciate some of the record's subtleties." He criticized the album for being "stolidly depoppified to ensure that no one will derive actual pleasure from it."[15]
In The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll for the year's best albums, The Ghost of Tom Joad placed at No. 8.[16]Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, simultaneously commended and criticized the album for being "the most courageous and the most depressing of the year," pointing out that Springsteen was the only artist in the poll's Top 40 "to directly address the war on the poor (and, increasingly, what is called the middle class) that is now the political agenda of the industrialized world." He also took aim at what he said was Springsteen's choice "to muffle his songs, so that only those who really want to hear their despair will bother trying." Christgau lamented that the "tunes, arrangements, and mysteriously praised 'phrasing' aren’t just forbiddingly minimal — often they’re rather careless", and dubbed the album "a bore".[17] Some retrospective criticism has ranked it as among Springsteen's finest albums.[18]
Twelve of the 22 songs recorded during the album's sessions made the final cut while "Dead Man Walkin'" was released on the soundtrack for the movie Dead Man Walking and later on The Essential Bruce Springsteen and "Brothers Under the Bridge" was released on Tracks.
A number of songs recorded during these sessions were released as part of 2025's Tracks II: The Lost Albums. These included the 'lost album' "Somewhere North of Nashville", revealed to have been recorded at the same time as 'The Ghost of Tom Joad', including previously known tracks such as 'Tiger Rose'. The collection also includes songs like "The Little Things", known to have been recorded again for 'Joad'. Others such as "Idiot's Delight" and "I'm Not Sleeping" were also performed live and along with "1945" and "Cheap Motel" were co-written with Joe Grushecky, who recorded the four songs for his 1997 album Coming Home.[19]
↑ "Listen – Danmarks Officielle Hitliste – Udarbejdet af AIM Nielsen for IFPI Danmark – Uge 47". Ekstra Bladet (in Danish). Copenhagen. November 26, 1995.
↑ "Springsteen a Sanremo con "furore"". La Stampa (in Italian). February 9, 1996. p.25. Retrieved March 5, 2021. il suo nuovo album ha venduto in pochi mesi 200 mila copie, mentre i critici, nelannuade referendum del mensile musica e dischi.
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