The Internet is a crazy thing; it’s an educational tool, it gives us access to an almost infinite amount of media, and in many cases, we can end up with music that wasn’t exactly meant to be heard. This time though, the victim at the forefront of this latest music leak, is the musical wizard Bruce Springsteen.
With a large cache of unreleased music to his name, a dedicated Bruce Springsteen fan might see the words ‘leaked music’ and assume we’re finally seeing the famous Electric Nebraska record released, the truth is that at least this time, it’s a ballad written for a movie soundtrack.
Back in October of last year, Bruce Springsteen was interviewed by Simon Mayo of BBC Radio2, and it was revealed that The Boss had written a song for the first Harry Potter film, although the track was ultimately never used in the film.
The track, titled ‘I’ll Stand By You Always’, was apparently ‘a big ballad’ and went unused by the producers of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone. However, as Rolling Stone reports, the track has now surfaced on SoundCloud after being released on a compilation of bootlegs released by the Bruce Springsteen bootleg website Jungleland.
While the track doesn’t reach the same inspirational heights as Springsteen’s Academy Award winning song ‘The Streets Of Philadelphia‘ from the movie Philadelphia, it is a slow-burning track, somewhat uncharacteristic of Springsteen’s usual style, but perfectly suited for a film soundtrack.
While Springsteen never said in his interview back in October why the track was rejected, there’s a strong chance it may have had something to do with the fact the producers wanted to use the purely instrumental tunes written by influential composer John Williams.
You can have a listen to the track below, but in the meantime, let’s just think about how many more kids would have a radically different music taste if they had been exposed to the genius of Bruce Springsteen at a much younger age.
