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To get to the point he has reached on his new album Magic – a record that unites all of his musical and lyrical phases, preoccupations and talents in one place – required Bruce Springsteen to travel down, and take numerous detours away from, a long and often obstacle-strewn path. This 20-track selection looks at some of the key junctions, signposts and career-transforming changes of direction he – and we – experienced along the way.

1 Growin’ Up

Album one, track two, and a sign of battles to come:

Springsteen the loner, the romantic dreamer, the auto-obsessive (“I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car”), the rebel, chafing against small-town constraints, but somehow still cleaving to them, for the reassurance they provide.

He’s impatient for adulthood, but wary of it too.

2 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

Just one among many named accomplices in Springsteen’s fantasies of flight and new horizons, on The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle’s most drop-dead dreamy song.

3 Thunder Road

The first few bars of Born to Run’s opening song remain some of the most important in Springsteen’s

career: as his harmonica and Roy Bittan’s celestial piano suddenly hasten to gather up the tempo that leads to “The screen door slams / Mary’s dress waves”, everything the singer wanted to say about his new artistic intent became clear in a thrilling instant.

4 Born to Run

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