Ghosts

This soaring rock song is a track from The Letter to You, Bruce Springsteen's first album with the E Street Band in six years. He told Rolling Stone he'd felt unable to write specifically for his backing band until the 2018 death of George Thiess, the lead singer of his teenage group, The Castiles. Springsteen's subsequent reflections on mortality spurred him to write several of the record's tracks, including this rousing number.

The respective deaths of E Street Band members Danny Federici from melanoma in 2008 and Clarence Clemons from a stroke in 2011 partly inspired this song. "'Ghosts' is about the beauty and joy of being in a band and the pain of losing one another to illness and time," said Springsteen.

The song finds Springsteen reflecting on how the memory of his departed loved ones leaves him feeling invigorated as well as sad. It's your ghost moving through the night Your spirit filled with light I need, need you by my side Your love and I'm alive Springsteen explained to Rolling Stone that the loss of Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons echoes every day in his life. "I still don't believe it," he said. "I'm like, 'I'm not gonna see Clarence again? That doesn't sound quite possible!' I live with the dead every day at this point in my life. Whether it's my father or Clarence or Danny, all those people sort of walk alongside you. Their spirit, their energy, their echo continues to resonate in the physical world. A beautiful part of living is what we're left by the dead."