UPDATE OCTOBER 16TH: “It’s About Time” sold a total of 997 copies in its first week according to Buzz Angle. Shameful on the part of BMG.

OCTOBER 11TH: Patty Smyth, the great rocker from the group Scandal, has released her first album in 28 years. It’s called “It’s About Time” and it’s a winner.

But for some reason Smyth’s album is on BMG Records, a kind of vanity junkhouse for legacy artists. I don’t know why artists sign with them. This past summer, BMG killed the latest Pretenders album, “Hate 4 Sale.” They do no marketing or publicity. Nothing for radio.

The result is disaster. “It’s About Time” — a labor of love — is now number 39 on iTunes. According to Buzz Angle, the album sold 412 copies on Friday. No one knows it’s out. I read about it from a post on Facebook.

On amazon, BMG even has the listing wrong. It says the album was available on July 24th. It was actually released yesterday. Even worse: it has no ranking on amazon, the one place where it could be selling. Amazon skews to older listeners who want CDs and don’t do much streaming. Patty should be at the top of their chart. So should the Pretenders, currently ranked at number 697.

Patty Smyth lead her group, Scandal, to the top of the charts in the 1980s with “The Warrior.” It’s still played all the time on WCBS FM and I’ll bet lots of other places. In the 1990s she married tennis great John McEnroe, had kids, raised a big family, and her career was backburnered. Over the years she’s appeared at New York charity functions, playing a blistering guitar and singing her heart out. But “It’s About Time” is a big comeback. Listen to it here on Spotify, or go get it on amazon. I’m ordering it right now, I want the CD in my car, cranked up and rocking.

And don’t forget “The Warrior”

We’ve been on a long tour of Bruce Springsteen’s past the last few years. He took it to Broadway, wrote a memoir, and continues to reminisce his glory days. This summer Springsteen, Little Steven van Zandt and Southside Johnny spent a couple of hours going over their magnificent beginnings on Sirius XM. For fans (that’s me) this was just about the best radio show I ever heard.

Now Bruce is trying to blend nostalgia with forward thinking. At 70 years old, he’s allowed. No one told him to keep making new records after creating an incredible library of music. But last year we had “Western Stars” following his Broadway run, and now we have the E Street Band album “Letter to You.” The album comprises some new songs, some from 1972 that he’s finally fleshed out, it’s a look back and forward simultaneously.

The album — Bruce’s 20th official studio album — was also made in just a few days. Springsteen smartly allowed director Thom Zimny, who made his Springsteen on Broadway film for Netflix, to shoot the recording of “Letter to You.” The film will unspool on Apple TV as the album drops. Interestingly, not all the songs from the album made the movie. One, called “Rainmaker,” which seems political to me. wasn’t included in the film. Maybe Bruce didn’t want to take the focus away from the camaraderie of the recording session.

Listening to the album is a whole different discipline than watching the making of the record. In the film, Zimny is looking for relationships, mixing old home movies with new visual anecdotes. It’s a tribute to Bruce and the E Street Band that they’ve never veered from their mission statement of 40 or 50 years ago. Their aim has remained true. You can draw a straight line through the decades from the beginning to now. And the film really brings out the talents of each member, Max’s pounding drums, Nils’s soaring guitar, Stevie van Zandt presiding over the whole thing as the architect of rock.

Maybe the one thing that has crept into the Band and Bruce’s lives is a melancholia derived from losing band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici. There is much toasting by the E Street to lost brethren, and much contemplating of the past. Songs from 1972 that were known only to fanatics have been reworked and recorded. One of them. Song for Orphans,” is conceded to be influenced by Bob Dylan, and I’ll tell you, it sure is.

Some of the songs that were known to fans, like “If I Were the Priest,” come to life as new classics. And one of them, “The Power of Prayer,” should be a radio single. It’s a hit, and it will misinterpreted as much as “Born to Run.” I like that.

You’ll want the album and the movie. Zimny knows how to get the most from live performances, and watching Bruce and the E Street Band construct the songs for the album is just dessert after a long, satisfying meal. And we get a little something extra after dessert, too. Through the film we meet Frank, Bruce’s “cousin” who taught him the guitar. And at the end of the movie, in what I called a post-film Marvel scene, they perform an acoustic version of the first single Bruce was on, in the group the Castiles, called “Baby I.” It’s a grace note Zimny, who gives us a little lump in the throat moment.

As for the album, a couple of songs that have grown on me in the short time I’ve had it: “House of a Thousand Guitars” with Roy Bittan’s piano leading the way at first I wasn’t sure about. The movie version sold me on it. The melody is surprising and disarming. “Burnin’ Train” is classic E Street, and I can’t wait to hear it in concert.

Both the movie and the CD hit next Friday, October 23rd, and I will probably have more to say about them between now and then.

Meantime, because it’s the 45th anniversary of “Born to Run,” I guess they’re playing it a lot on Sirius. I’m re-enraptured by “Thunder Road” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.” I’ve also been humming the mini-melodies from “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” There’s a moment in the movie when Bruce talks about fans at a concert doing that. I know how they feel. I love the look of surprise on his face realizing the fans know those interior melodies. These things are lodged in our heads, Bruce.

“If I Was the Priest” and “Janey Needs a Shooter” are old songs from concerts. They exist in bootleg form. Other artists sometimes got to them first. Warren Zevon has a version of “Janey” on YouTube. Allan Clarke of the Hollies (very underrated singer) did “Priest.”

Is this for real?

Justin Bieber’s new single, “Lonely,” is a pity party for himself in which he whines and yodels about being rich, famous, and misunderstood.

This is a pop star bereft of ideas, so isolated from reality that he doesn’t realize millions of people are out of work, and we’re living through a pandemic. No, “Lonely” is all about ME ME ME. This is from a 25 year old covered in tattoos living in a mansion with his beautiful young wife. He’s really suffering.

No one wants to hear it, Justin. You are a ridiculous person. You lack all intellectual curiosity or any sense of the world around you.

Bieber is so far below the rest of his pop class, starting with Demi Lovato, whose “Commander in Chief” is a sensational pop moment.

Grade: F. He’ll be lucky if Melania Trump doesn’t write a response single called “I Don’t Care, Do You?”