Songfacts®:

• This soaring rock song is a track from The Letter to You, Bruce Springsteen's first album with the E Street Band in six years. He told Rolling Stone he'd felt unable to write specifically for his backing band until the 2018 death of George Thiess, the lead singer of his teenage group, The Castiles. Springsteen's subsequent reflections on mortality spurred him to write several of the record's tracks, including this rousing number.
• The respective deaths of E Street Band members Danny Federici from melanoma in 2008 and Clarence Clemons from a stroke in 2011 partly inspired this song. "'Ghosts' is about the beauty and joy of being in a band and the pain of losing one another to illness and time," said Springsteen.
• The song finds Springsteen reflecting on how the memory of his departed loved ones leaves him feeling invigorated as well as sad.
  
  It's your ghost moving through the night
  Your spirit filled with light
  I need, need you by my side
  Your love and I'm alive
  
  Springsteen explained to Rolling Stone that the loss of Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons echoes every day in his life. "I still don't believe it," he said. "I'm like, 'I'm not gonna see Clarence again? That doesn't sound quite possible!' I live with the dead every day at this point in my life. Whether it's my father or Clarence or Danny, all those people sort of walk alongside you. Their spirit, their energy, their echo continues to resonate in the physical world. A beautiful part of living is what we're left by the dead."
• Jake Clemons' saxophone enters at the song's end. Jake has been the saxophonist for the E Street Band since 2010, following the death of his uncle, Clarence Clemons.
• Springsteen played this song and "I'll See You In My Dreams" on the December 12, 2020 episode of Saturday Night Live. The E Street Band joined the Boss, marking their first public performance together in nearly four years.