The Boss Bruce Springsteen Releases The First Official Greatest-Hits Album In His 22-Year Career

To folks from his Jersey Shore hometown, he might just be the boy from Freehold who made good.

But to the rest of the music world, Bruce Springsteen is the kind of superstar whose combination of artistry and commercial achievement brings respect few artists approach.

Who else could wind up on the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week (20 years ago this October, no less), earn Grammys and an Oscar, sell millions of records, jam with everybody from Chuck Berry to Melissa Etheridge, and inspire thousands of songwriters bent on capturing the nobility of the working man’s everyday struggle?

All this serves to explain the feverish anticipation preceding the simply titled “Greatest Hits” (Columbia), an 18-song retrospective, due in stores today, that includes four new songs by Springsteen and his former backing unit, the E Street Band. It’s the first official greatest-hits package of his 22-year recording career.

Except for the new material, the songs here will surprise only the most casual Springsteen fan. The album clusters 14 of his best-known songs, beginning with “Born to Run” (1975) and ending with “Streets of Philadelphia” (1993).

The new stuff is everything we would expect from ‘90s-era E Street. It’s a supple mix of guitar, piano, harmonica and saxophone flavors that ebb and flow on contemplative songs like “Blood Brothers” and “Secret Garden.”

For these songs, Springsteen continues the inward vision of recent work. He reflects on the area a woman will keep private from her closest lover on “Secret Touch” and the way life’s unfolding evolution can separate close friends (Can you say “E Street reference?”) on “Blood Brothers.”

The album’s first single, “Murder Incorporated,” slams like any legendary E Street jam. An outtake from “Born in the U.S.A.” remixed a few months ago, this cut percolates with the Boss’ take on today’s urban battlefields pushed by Steve Van Zandt’s guitar swirl and drummer Max Weinberg’s insistent beat.

The other members of the E Street crew are here as well, including keyboardists Roy Bittan and Danny Federici, bassist Garry Tallent, guitarist Nils Lofgren and saxophonist Clarence Clemons.

Listening to the seamless, rootsy feel of “This Hard Land,” an ambling tale of rootlessness and the heartland’s decay, it’s hard to believe these guys haven’t made a record together since Springsteen handed out pink slips in 1989.

For clues to how these “Blood Brothers” forged that bond, the 13 songs before these new nuggets (excluding the solo turn “Streets of Philadelphia”) offer powerful evidence.

We hear the early scope and majesty of Springsteen’s R&B-flavored rock dramas in “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road.” Dreams of springing out of “cages on Highway 9” from smalltown roots predominate on these piano-, organ- and saxophone-flavored slices of earnest feeling.

The optimism of his early work gains a darker, more complex weight as the collection moves to material like “Badlands” and “The River” (from the albums “Darkness at the Edge of Town” and “The River,” respectively), where Springsteen relates the everyday struggle of working-class heroes.

The list of landmark songs continues, mixing the stark “Atlantic City” (from his collection of home recordings called “Nebraska”) with mainstream hits like “Hungry Heart,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Glory Days.”

Though his vision moves inward on later songs like “Brilliant Disguise,” “Human Touch” and “Better Days,” the trademark Springsteen vibe remains. Powerful, poetic visions are couched in vibrant, rock ‘n’ roll flavors.

Still, it’s a surprisingly spare collection for someone who casts such a long musical shadow. Excluded completely are his first two albums, 1973’s “Greetings From Asbury Park, New Jersey” and “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.” As a fan of “Blinded by the Light” and “Rosalita,” I’m one disappointed guy.

Particularly in an era filled with box sets, B-side collections and newly unearthed rarities, this collection’s focus on the well-known and expected seems a bit miserly. (Even the in-concert material from “Live 1975-1985” is excluded.)

It also fuels speculation that the record is a vehicle to put “Streets …” on an honest-to-gosh Springsteen album before Wednesday’s Grammy awards, where the song is nominated in five categories.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Eric Deggans Asbury Park (N.J.) Press