The 25 best musicians of the Rock & Roll era

Who took the top slots for the best artists in the Rock-and-Roll era? Check out the full list.

2. Bruce Springsteen

Dave Alloca/Starpix/AP

The rock and folk musician released his first album, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J." in 1973, finally hitting it big with the 1975 album "Born to Run," and is known for the song of the same name as well as  "Born in the USA," "Spirit in the Night" and "Hungry Heart," among others.

Here's how the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him: "During a decade in which disco, glam-rock, heavy-metal and arena-rock provided different forms of escape into fantasy, Springsteen restored a note of urgency and realism to the rock and roll landscape. Each painstakingly crafted album since his 1973 debut, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., has served as a literate pulse-taking of a generation’s fortunes. As a live performer, he offers himself as a “prisoner” of the music he loves, and each concert has been played as if it might be his last."

Springsteen continues to tour today with the members of his E Street Band.

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About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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