Bruce Springsteen Makes The Case For America At MSG

Bruce Springsteen has been opening his shows with a prayer. He and the E Street Band walk onstage quietly. He steps to the mic as they atmospherically play behind him. Before a single song is performed he simply speaks to the audience. “We begin the night with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas. We pray for an end to this conflict and for their safe return,” he begins, opening with a sentiment most anyone should be able to agree with. It continues: “The E Street Band is here tonight in celebration and defense of the American ideals and values that have sustained our country for 250 years. We are here to call upon the righteous power of art and music and rock ‘n’ roll in these dangerous times.” Then, he gets a little more pointed: 

Our democracy, our constitution, our rule of law, are being challenged right now as never before by a reckless, racist, incompetent, treasonous president and his ship of fools administration. So tonight, we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, truth over lies, unity over division, and peace over — war.

Just before he says “War,” he lets his speech hang for just a split second, a pause of tension, and when he gets to the word he’s no longer speaking but bellowing. The prayer tumbles right into the E Street Band’s opening song on this tour, the Vietnam-era protest song “War,” first cut by the Temptations but made famous by Edwin Starr. It’s a classic bit of E Street theatre, and it works. From the very beginning, Bruce’s current show has a viewpoint, a mission, and is galvanizing in its execution. 

When Springsteen first announced the Land Of Hope & Dreams Tour in February, it seemed to emerge directly from nationwide protests around ICE activity, and the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE agents. Springsteen had already been vocal in his opposition to ICE’s activities, and had shared a protest song called “Streets Of Minneapolis.” The tour, accompanied by a statement espousing a more eternal and enduring American identity as well as a “NO KINGS” sub-header, was obviously arriving with a thesis. This was also true of E Street’s long-awaited return in 2023, when a mixture of Letter To You promotion and greatest hits celebration allowed Springsteen to meditate on legacy and mortality. Now, welcoming the similarly politically-minded Tom Morello back into the fold for his first tour with E Street in over a decade, Springsteen promised the “cavalry” was coming to shine a light, fight back, etc. in these precarious times. 

Naturally, this introduction kicks off the Land Of Hope & Dreams Tour on inherently more divisive note than E Street’s triumphant 2023 resurrection. It’s already long been a trope that the more moneyed, conservative wings of Springsteen’s fanbase may have… somewhat missed the point of even his classic era work when they say they wish he’d leave politics out of it. But now younger fans — skeptical of astronomically priced arena shows in a hyper-corporate music landscape, of rock music (or any pop culture) as meaningful protest in the 21st century, maybe even of the foundational American system folks like Springsteen seek to heal — might too have their turn at “I like his music, I don’t care for his politics.” 

In the early stretch of the set, you wouldn’t know it. From “War” they launched right into “Born In The U.S.A.,” a song I’ve tried to see live for 20 years and always failed — Springsteen seemed to avoid it in America based on the rampant misinterpretation of it in the ’80s, but its meaning was abundantly clear now. Then: “Death To My Hometown” pulling from the Recession-era Wrecking Ball. Then a cover of the Clash’s “Clampdown,” then “No Surrender.” Certain songs had a message, and some fell under new light; a refrain of “No retreat, baby, no surrender” obviously hit differently here. In 2023, the sprawling E Street shows started strong but took some time to really lift off into the barn-burning final half. Not here. Springsteen and the remaining core/longstanding E Street members are all in their mid-seventies. And yet, still, they were able to conjure a three hour show, exhilarating and overwhelming, rarely letting up for an acoustic song or another prayer, another speech. And the audience reacted in kind: the timbre not being annoyance from those who disagree with him or raised eyebrows from those further left, but an atmosphere or runaway joy and catharsis. 

From there Springsteen sequences songs in potent arcs, threading together music from across his career in ways novel to the free-for-all sets of his past: “Darkness On The Edge Of Town” and “Streets Of Minneapolis” and “The Promised Land” sat together. The old gangland tale in “Murder Incorporated” was reframed as a seething lead-in to the more somber and reflective “American Skin (41 Shots),” a 2001 composition about the police killing of Amadou Diallo, which in turn led into the weary hope of the Iraq War-era Magic cut “Long Walk Home.” At the end of the set, resilience and righteous fury mingled: “The Rising,” forever recontexualized as a post-9/11 beacon, alongside a volcanic “The Ghost Of Tom Joad” with implausible, mesmerizing solos from Morello, into “Badlands” and, finally, “Land Of Hope In Dreams.” In the middle of it all was Springsteen’s most durable piece of American gospel: “My City Of Ruins,” a song once written for a dilapidated Asbury Park, then recontextualized as a 9/11 song, then again and again: for the Recession, for the rise of MAGA, and now for a new host of transgressions. 

Before that song, Springsteen delivered another speech. He talked of our latest Middle East debacle as “an incompetent and illegal war,” of voting rights under threat, immigrants held in for-profit detention centers, unrepentant corruption in the current administration. He punctuated each one with: “This is happening now.” Simple and obvious, sure, but in the context of the show and these songs, each time he said it felt like a punch to the gut. 

From a purely musical standpoint, no 76-year-old classic rock icon should be able to pull this off. There was the usual encore parade of hits of course, and plenty of old favorites throughout. There was all the exuberance and power of a customary E Street show. But there was less of the mugging and goofing off, less of the seaside summer bangers, less of the band’s own mythology. In their purpose, they showcased an array of material comparatively light on his peak era, and surprisingly heavy on music from the ’90s onwards, particularly from his late-era resurgence as a kind of American bard during a tumultuous 21st century. Few artists of his generation and stature have any business loading up a set like that, and yet in the moment you realize “Wrecking Ball” has become as definitive as any of the old hits. In the moment, you look around and see how much people are clapping and cheering even for “American Land.” I was, as ever, in awe of what Springsteen can do onstage, how he can command an audience of this size, night after night, while guiding them through songs very old and very new, the ubiquitous hits and deeper cuts alike as powerful as ever. As the man barrels towards 80, he will still put on one of the best shows you’ll see in your life. 

Since my days as a music journalist in New York City, I have spent a lot of time behind what my former Brooklynite circles would firmly consider enemy lines. In brief Florida stints I mingled with rich retirees and haggard locals, most of whom trafficked in a feedback loop as intense as one in a coastal city, theirs just being right-wing instead of left. I worked with contractors in my hometown in Pennsylvania, and overheard construction site workers blame everything on immigrants (and, occasionally, secret government laser systems, but that’s a whole other thing). I currently live in Nashville, a sometimes questionably self-proclaimed “blue island” in a deeply red state. 

During my time in NYC, I would’ve had disdain for my hometown. I would’ve waved off everyone who disagreed with me as ignorant for being bamboozled by a grift so blatant. And yet the same way urban life forces us to get to know people far different from us, returning to middle America made me embrace the humanity in those I once would’ve sneered at. I’m not really excusing the myopia of my younger years nor claiming to have some elevated political acumen now, but what I did see in these last several years was how much everyone was struggling under this current system, how we were coming from the same hurt but arriving at different places, and how fear and anger was fomented by the ones meant to lead us, stoked to metastasize into hate. The difference now was I didn’t hate people for having fallen into that. I guess what I’m saying is: When Springsteen talked about unity, when he talked about the idea that there is some core American interconnectedness that can win out, it didn’t ring hollow to me anymore. 

Maybe the music was so effective that I’d been swept up in it. Maybe, for you, that wouldn’t work: Maybe you find the rot in our system too deep, or reject the idea that center-liberal Boomers that lived through the American Century have the foresight for how we survive, how we evolve. “America renews itself, I believe in that,” Springsteen said, now quiet and sitting on the lip of the stage before they closed the show with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes Of Freedom.” “The hardest thing is feeling the distance between you and your neighbors,” he continued, then asserting: “But America was born out of disagreement. America is an argument.” He meant it in a beautiful way. There have been times I believed in that renewal, and more times I believed the entropy of decaying empires was coming for us all. But if there is one artist, one American citizen, who can make me for a second believe our country still has this capacity, it’s Bruce Springsteen. This time, I heard where he was coming from.