rejected songs

Listen to Bruce Springsteen’s Harry Potter Song and Wonder No More Why It Was Rejected

No magic here. Photo: Kevin Mazur Photography/Getty Images for The Bob Woodruf

Yer not a wizard, Bruce. In further proof that Bruce Springsteen’s Hogwarts letter got permanently lost in the mail, his rejected Harry Potter song, “I’ll Stand by You Always,” has apparently been unleashed on the internet. Last year, Springsteen admitted that he wrote an “uncharacteristic” ballad for his eldest son, which he then submitted for the first Harry Potter movie in 2001. The film passed on it, prompting fan outrage after learning of the decision over a decade later. But that’s only because none of us had heard it. Cover your ears like you’re about to de-pot a Mandrake; it’s not pretty. Actually, it’s too pretty — in a father-son-lullaby-that-should-never-be-sung-beyond-the-privacy-of-one’s-bedroom sort of way. It’s five-and-a-half minutes of schmaltz, setting a scene that just simply did not exist in the Sorcerer’s Stone. A Ron-Hermione slow dance at the Yule Ball a few years later, though? Now we’re talking.

Listen to Bruce Springsteen’s Rejected Harry Potter Song