Bruce Springsteen has a rare talent for capturing cultural flash points and crystallizing them in song. The proud son of New Jersey did it in 2001 with “American Skin (41 Shots),” about the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Black man, by police. He did it in 2002 with “The Rising,” an album about recovery and resilience after the attack on the World Trade Center, and again in 2006, when his performance of songs including “We Shall Overcome” and “My City in Ruins” in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina brought the audience at the Jazz & Heritage Festival to tears.
And in 2026, he has tapped the zeitgeist with “Streets of Minneapolis,” a Dylanesque ode written and released just days after ICE officers fatally shot Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in the Twin Cities.
Springsteen and the E Street Band played the new tune Tuesday at the first night of their Land of Hope and Dreams tour in Minneapolis, as part of a blistering five-song opening salvo that ended in “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” the title track of his 1978 album about oppression and depression.
“This past winter, federal troops brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis,” Springsteen, 76, said to the packed Target Center. “Well they picked the wrong town. The power, the solidarity of the people of Minneapolis, of Minnesota, was an inspiration to the entire country. Your strength and your commitment told us this is still America. And this will not stand.”
The crowd of nearly 18,000 held lighted cellphones aloft, creating a sea of stars as they shouted along to the lyrics “ICE out now!” once, twice, three times, and then four, louder each time. They booed the names Noem and Miller and cheered for Good and Pretti. Nearby, a man stood weeping.
Springsteen had come out swinging, telling the crowd, “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, unity over division and peace over war.”
The last, shouted word was the first of the opening song, the 1970 protest anthem “War” by Edwin Starr. The cover was immediately followed by another antiwar song, Springsteen’s own “Born in the USA.” The 1984 hit offered a doubly timely message: It is currently being used by the American Civil Liberties Union in its campaign to support the birthright citizenship case, which is being argued in the Supreme Court beginning on Wednesday.
Since Springsteen opened his European tour last May by calling on “the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll, in dangerous times,” the 20-time Grammy winner has had a momentous year. A boxed set of previously unreleased albums, a biopic, a protest anthem, an entire academic conference about his work, and now this tour. He said at the Target Center that the concerts had not been planned, but were inspired by the Minnesota resistance. The final date is May 27 in Washington.
The 17-member group was joined on several songs by the Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who has toured with Springsteen before. (Patti Scialfa did not perform; the musician, who is married to Springsteen, announced she has cancer in 2024.) Morello, a Gen X-er, provides the most dynamic counterpart to Springsteen’s old-school heroics since the E Streeters lost the sax player Clarence Clemons to cancer in 2011. On “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” a 1995 protest ballad based on John Steinbeck’s novel about Dust Bowl migrants, “The Grapes of Wrath,” Morello played a punk-metal-hip-hop soliloquy on a guitar painted with the message “Arm the Homeless.” As he swirled around the stage, ripping note after incendiary note, the crowd rose to its feet.
The E Streeters next slammed into the opening riff of “Badlands,” another song from “Darkness,” but this one about escape and redemption. Like so many of the tunes Springsteen performed, the lyrics took on new meaning in 2026: “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king / And a king ain’t satisfied, ’til he rules everything,” Springsteen sang just three days after having performed at the No Kings rally at the Minnesota state capitol.
For almost three hours Bruce never left the stage. After turning off the lights briefly, he came back to the front to the sound of notes that probably everyone there recognized. “For the maestro,” he said, and the band played “Purple Rain.” No kings, but yes, Prince.
He gave a final speech, speaking about the freedom to disagree. “Now I go back to thinking about Renee Good’s last words before she died, he said. “To the man who she was protesting against, the man who would take her life, she said, ‘That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.’ I’m not mad. God bless her.”
Then Springsteen closed with a song by another Minnesota legend, Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.”
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