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Album version
Now brothers and sisters listen to me
These are the few things that I leave to thee
The sword of our fathers with lessons hard taught
The shield strong and sturdy from battles well fought
Well this is your sword, this is your shield
This is the power of love revealed
Carry them with you wherever you go
And give all the love that you have in your soul
The times they are dark, darkness covers the earth
This world's filled with the beauty of God's work
Hold tight to your promise, stay righteous, stay strong
For the days of miracles will come along
Now this is your sword, this is your shield
This is the power of love revealed
Carry it with you wherever you go
And give all the love that you have in your soul
In the days of despair you can grow hard
Till you close your mind and empty your heart
If you find yourself staring in the abyss
Hold tight to your loved ones and remember this
This shield will protect your sacred heart
The sword will defend from what comes in the dark
Should you grow weary on the battle field
Well do not despair, our love is real
This is your sword, this is your shield
This is the power of love revealed
Carry it with you wherever you go
And give all the love that you have in your soul
And give all the love that you have in your soul
Hey! Hey!
THIS IS YOUR SWORD is a song written by Bruce Springsteen and released on his 2014 album High Hopes. The above lyrics are for Bruce Springsteen's album version of THIS IS YOUR SWORD as released in 2014.
THIS IS YOUR SWORD was recorded in 2012 or 2013 while Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band where on the road for the Wrecking Ball Tour. In a December 2013 interview for Rolling Stone, Andy Greene asked producer Ron Aniello why does session musician Josh Freese play drums on THIS IS YOUR SWORD when it's Max Weinberg on all the other songs. Aniello explained: "As you said, this started as a much different project. He gave me demos and I was trying to get them into shape. He was on the road and I was in Los Angeles. Max was busy on the tour, so I went through and brought Josh in to play drums. Bruce and I play drums all the time on demos just to see what it sounds like without a drum machine. That's how Josh wound up on that song. Max pretty much played everything else."
The album version of THIS IS YOUR SWORD was produced by Ron Aniello with Bruce Springsteen. The performing musicians line-up on the track is:
High Hopes is Bruce Springsteen's eighteenth studio album. It was officially released on 14 Jan 2014 on Columbia Records. It consists of 12 tracks and clocks at 56:24. Four songs were previously released in different versions (two of which are covers), two more were previously performed live but never released, and the remaining six are new to fans (one of which is a cover). "This is music I always felt needed to be released," Springsteen wrote in the album's liner notes.
In a December 2013 interview for Rolling Stone, Springsteen told Andy Greene that he has always written and recorded significantly more songs than can fit on to whatever album he's creating at the moment. "I have a lot of this music on a computer," he said. "I bring it out on the road to amuse myself. Very often, if I have nothing to do late at night I'll bring it up and look at different bodies of music." The songs that began catching Springsteen's attention were largely recorded after he reunited with the E Street Band in 1999. "The songs were relatively current and had a similar sound picture," he said. "I was interested in putting this material together in some form because it sounded like it all fit together... You have to imagine that when I'm home or done with a tour I go into a studio and I'm surrounded by paintings that I've sorta half-finished. There might be something wrong with this one and I didn't have time to finish this one. When I go into my studio, I'm surrounded by all my music that I haven't released. I wait to see what's going to speak to me." But then they cut a few sessions in 2013 while on tour. "I said, 'Well, these sound good,'" Springsteen told Rolling Stone. "These things blend together. Suddenly, it began to feel very fresh and fit together quite well."
Work on the album started in late 2012 when Springsteen called producer Ron Aniello asking him to work on some demos that he was thinking about releasing. "I remember that Bruce called me on my birthday, so it was December 9th, 2012", Aniello told Andy Greene in a December 2013 interview for Rolling Stone. "He said to me, 'I have some songs. I want to get together.'" According to Aniello, these were old demos that Springsteen had done with Toby Scott and that had been around for a while. Springsteen told him that he wanted to get these songs in shape and see what comes out of that. Aniello was not able to sit with Springsteen to sort it all out because Springsteen was away most of the time touring with the E Street Band. "It all happened in a very unusual manner," Aniello told Rolling Stone. "There was a lot of conversations in Europe and I did some of the recording via iChat when the band was in Australia."
In a January 2014 interview for Rolling Stone, Tom Morello told Andy Greene that he wasn't aware that there was ever talk of a new studio album when they sent him a couple of songs to add guitar on. He did that in his home studio and shortly after he was recording in studio with Max Weinberg and Ron Aniello. "But these studio sessions just kept occurring without any formal notion of what we were doing," Morello recounted. "My assumption was just that 'Bruce is always recording music.' So it was fantastic that I was asked to be a part of it. I was psyched." In March 2013 Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performed ten shows in Australia as part of the Wrecking Ball Tour. Steven Van Zandt was off filming his television series Lillyhammer and was replaced by Morello for that leg of the tour. Morello suggested to add HIGH HOPES to the live set. They worked it up during the rehearsals prior to the Australian shows and Morello then "proceeded to burn the house down with it," as Springsteen said. They then re-cut the song along with JUST LIKE FIRE WOULD at Studios 301, Australia's largest studio complex. "Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level," Springsteen said. He told Rolling Stone's David Fricke, "We've never had a recording session during a tour in our lives. We did a couple of things that I wanted to put down. So that was very exciting. And being with Tommy was exciting. The band — Steven, Nils, all those guys — continues to be a source of inspiration for me." Morello told Rolling Stone that he didn't get the notion that this was "coalescing into what was going to be a major release" until they were in Australia.
No less than sixteen recording studios were used in the making of High Hopes: Thrill Hill Recording (Springsteen's home studio in Colts Neck, NJ), Stone Hill Studio (Springsteen's new home studio in Colts Neck, NJ), Very Loud House (in Los Angeles, CA), Renegade Studio (in New York City, NY), Veritas Studio (in Los Angeles, CA), Southern Tracks (Atlanta, GA), East West Studios (in Los Angeles, CA), NRG Studios (in Los Angeles, CA), Village Studios (in Los Angeles, CA), Studios 301 (in Byron Bay and Sydney, Australia), Record Plant (in Los Angeles, CA), Electric Lady Studios (in New York City, NY), Avatar Studios (in New York City, NY), Sear Sound (in New York City, NY), and Berkeley Street Studio (in Santa Monica, CA).
Ron Aniello revealed that at least 20 tracks were recorded for the album. Among the tracks that didn't make the album cut were COLD SPOT, HEY BLUE EYES, AMERICAN BEAUTY, and MARY MARY.
The album was produced by Bruce Springsteen, Brendan O'Brien, and Ron Aniello. It features all E Street Band members, including the late Clarence Clemons and the late Danny Federici on several songs of what Springsteen calls "some of our best unreleased material from the past decade." The album also features an ensemble of guest artists, including Tom Morello who's featured prominently on the album, appearing on eight tracks.
High Hopes is available in three configurations: standard CD edition, limited edition, and double-disc LP. The limited edition consists of the standard audio CD and includes a bonus live DVD of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performing the entire Born In The U.S.A. album on 30 Jun 2013 at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, England, during the Wrecking Ball Tour. The double-disc LP is pressed on 180-gram vinyl and includes a CD version of the album.
High Hopes track list:
High Hopes was officially announced on 25 Nov 2013 and the release date was set for 14 Jan 2014, but on 28 Dec 2013 it became available for purchase as individual tracks in MP3 format through Amazon.com's mobile application. Although Amazon quickly removed the files, presumably recognizing its mistake, the album had already made its way onto file-sharing websites.
The album topped the charts in 20 countries, including the United States and the UK. It was Springsteen's eleventh #1 album in the US, placing him third all-time for most #1 albums only behind The Beatles and Jay-Z. It was his tenth #1 in the UK, putting him joint fifth all-time and level with The Rolling Stones and U2.
| Country | Chart | Peak position |
| Australia | Aria Top 50 Albums Chart | 1 |
| Austria | Alben Top 75 | 2 |
| Belgium | Ultratop 50 Albums (Flanders) | 1 |
| Belgium | Ultratop 50 Albums (Wallonia) | 2 |
| Canada | Billboard Top Canadian Albums | 1 |
| Croatia | Arhiva Kombiniranih (all artists chart) | 1 |
| Czech Republic | ČNS IFPI - CZ Albums Top 100 | 1 |
| Denmark | Album 40 | 1 |
| Finland | Suomen Virallinen Albumilista | 1 |
| France | Top 200 Albums | 2 |
| Germany | Media Control Charts Top 100 Albums | 1 |
| Greece | 1 | |
| Hungary | Top 40 Albums | 12 |
| Ireland | Top 100 Individual Artist Albums | 1 |
| Italy | Top 20 Albums | 1 |
| Japan | Japan Hot 100 | 8 |
| New Zealand | Album Top 40 | 1 |
| Norway | VG-lista Topp 40 Album | 1 |
| Poland | Poland Albums Top 50 | 6 |
| Portugal | Albums Top 30 | 4 |
| Slovenia | 1 | |
| South Africa | 5 | |
| South Korea | 83 | |
| Spain | Album Top 100 | 1 |
| Sweden | Sverigetopplistan Albums Top 60 | 1 |
| Switzerland | Albums Top 100 | 1 |
| The Netherlands | Album Top 100 | 1 |
| UK | Official UK Albums Top 100 | 1 |
| USA | Billboard 200 | 1 |
THIS IS YOUR SWORD was performed 3 times during the High Hopes Tour (34 dates, January to May 2014). On this tour, the song was played in its album arrangement.
As far as it's known, no artist has recorded and released Bruce Springsteen's THIS IS YOUR SWORD.
List of available versions of THIS IS YOUR SWORD on this website:
THIS IS YOUR SWORD [Album version]