b. 1949 · American singer, songwriter and musician
Bruce Springsteen (b. 1949) both wrote ‘Blinded by the Light’ and recorded it first, as the opening track of his 1973 debut Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. for Columbia. The album won critics but few buyers, and the song passed almost unnoticed. It is a genuine irony that his one composition to reach US No. 1 did so in someone else’s hands, three years before he became a household name — so the song most people cannot place as his is, in fact, entirely his.