Springsteen seemed to be tickled, for some reason, by whatever Stevie Van Zandt was doing with his part of the customary call-and-response that always comes up at the end of “Out in the Street.” And something about the way Nils Lofgren was playing the guitar intro to “Land of Hope and Dreams” caused Springsteen to giggle at length, for reasons unknown to the audience. Gravity returned with the rust-belt-gone-wrong song “Youngstown,” the thunderous evocation of everyday violence in “Murder Incorporated,” and the first song Springsteen wrote about real-life police violence, “American Skin (41 Shots).” The latter number is so presciently akin to the new “Streets of Minneapolis” that it’s no wonder he placed them in different parts of the set, so as not to leave the audience wallowing too long in the abuse of authority at any one time, even if they’d make effective twins. Like a lot of the more familiar Springsteen songs brought onto this setlist, it’s a tune that manages to cover multiple subjects at once: the loss of an old friend, the eternal healing power of stacks of amps, and — written during the first Trump administration — the distress that a “criminal clown has stolen the throne.” (If he felt that was during the president’s calmer first term, no wonder Springsteen is going full-time with his dismay now.)
Author: Chris Willman
Published at: 2026-04-01 21:27:01
Still want to read the full version? Full article
