Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen song) in Long Branch, New Jersey in early 1974, the song was Bruce Springsteen's final attempt to become successful. The prior year, Springsteen had released two albums to critical acclaim but with little commercial movement. Written in the first person, the song is a love letter to a girl named Wendy, for whom the hot rod-riding protagonist seems to possess the passion to love, just not the patience. However, Springsteen has noted that it has a much simpler core: getting out of Freehold. Route 9 is mentioned from the lyric "sprung from cages out on Highway 9". In his 1996 book
The Essential Bruce Springsteen copies. It spent 13 weeks on the chart. The album was awarded gold and platinum records on December 16, 2003, by the RIAA, and has sold 1,079,000 copies in the USA. as of August 2013. "The Essential Bruce Springsteen" also reached #15 on the UK Albums Chart in 2013. The album was re-released with an updated track list in October 2015. The album received general acclaim from music critics, who appreciated its captivation of Springsteen's most recognizable hits throughout his career and called it "a better compilation album than "Greatest Hits"", which was released in 1995. The Essential Bruce Springsteen