The Ghost of Tom Joad is the eleventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, released on November 21, 1995, by Columbia Records.

Springsteen wrote and recorded the album between March and September, 1995, at Thrill Hill West, his home studio in Los Angeles, California.

[1] The character of Tom Joad entered the American consciousness in John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, set against the economic hardships of the Great Depression.

[1] This spawned a film version starring Henry Fonda, which in turn inspired folk singer Woody Guthrie to pen "The Ballad of Tom Joad".

[2] The album's release was followed by Springsteen's solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, which ran from 1995 to 1997 and took place in mostly small venues.

"[13] He characterised it as Springsteen's "first overtly social statement since Born in the U.S.A.", and as having "an obvious kinship with Spingsteen’s 1982 masterwork, Nebraska", the artist's first acoustic album.