Bruce Springsteen, and other artists who release far too much material

FANS of The Boss are still reeling after he dropped seven unreleased albums a fortnight ago. He and these artists need the locks changing on their f**king vaults: 

Neil Young

Beloved for a handful of great seventies records, even fans avoid mentioning the 24 albums he’s released this century, and that’s not including his 17-album Archive series. Even the most ardent country-rock aficionado hasn’t got time to sort wheat from chaff in that f**king lot. You’d do little else.

Bruce Springsteen

The five-and-a-half hour Tracks II box set is just the latest presentation of heartland rock floor sweepings he’s given us. All of it sounds like Bruce Springsteen. As a whole, it’s like drowning in Bruce Springsteen while Bruce Springsteen holds you under with his strong American arms.

Johnny Cash

Country music is very much a quantity-over-quality deal. It therefore makes perfect sense that not even death could prevent Cash from churning them out. Five posthumous releases take his tally of studio albums to 68. You have to worry if a Dead From San Quentin release is on the slate for Q4.

Ryan Adams

From 2011 to 2019, Adams released three albums. Then he got cancelled, after which he’s released 13, five in 2024 alone. Either it’s proved a creative boon or he’s lost everyone who used to provide quality control and is fortnightly screaming his alt-country pain into the void. You’d have to listen to find out, and you won’t.

Van Morrison

Morrison could have retired after Astral Weeks and Moondance, his legacy secured as a pioneer of folk jazz and a miserable bastard. Nearly 50 albums, increasingly cantankerous, reviewed only in places like Guitar World. Dude. It’s over.

Bob Dylan

Not content with 40 offical albums of wildly varying quality, Dylan has a whole parallel discography of guff not good enough to make those albums. Still don’t consider him a genius? This is a man who can break wind into a microphone and then sell it as a bootleg.

Coldplay

Is ten studio albums in nearly a quarter of a century too much material? When it’s Coldplay it is.