Concertgoers were treated to a 3-hour rock clinic in downtown Atlanta last night, as Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band brought their “Land of Hopes and Dreams” tour to State Farm Arena. The show comes midway through a string of dates that are shaping up to be arguably the most overtly political tour of Springsteen’s career, marked by direct references to current political figures, pointed onstage remarks, and a setlist structured around protest and dissent.
Together, these elements reframe Springsteen’s catalog not as nostalgia, but as a pointed commentary on the state of American life. That sense of urgency was amplified by the presence of special guest Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine.
Tag Archive: Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen brought his E Street Band to Chicago for a sold-out show on Wednesday night, marking the latest stop on the “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour. As the band made their way through a varied setlist that spanned over 10 albums and 40 years of music, Springsteen struck a balance between respectfully mourning the tragedies of recent history and inspiring an infectious, joyous hope. All the while, the 76-year-old proved he’s still got it, hopping around, hollering, and playing to the crowd in the way only The Boss can.
Springsteen set the tone for the night as soon as he stepped onto the stage. Under a spotlight, the artist made his greetings before laying out his mission statement: “The E Street Band is here in Chicago tonight in celebration and peaceful…
Sony are releasing Bruce Springsteen’s ‘homecoming’ performance in Asbury Park that formed part of the Sea.Hear.Now festival back in 2024.
The live album captures Springsteen’s three-hour hometown show in all its glory. Serving as the first-ever physical release of the performance, Live from Asbury Park 2024 is a 5xLP, 3xCD set featuring Springsteen and The E Street Band tearing through classics like “Thunder Road” and “Dancing in the Dark,” plus early gems penned just down the road, including “Blinded By the Light” and “Growin’ Up.”
Of course, the concert was a major homecoming for the Boss, who grew up and still lives just a few miles from Asbury Park, has played there countless times over his career…
Bruce Springsteen took the high road during his Sunday concert at Austin, Texas’ Moody Center, praying for President Trump in the wake of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting and exhorting fans to uphold American ideals such as honesty, compassion and humility after they went home. Then the Boss rocked the packed arena with such soul-stirring fervor that it would have been nearly impossible not to heed his call.
When Springsteen surprise-announced his current Land of Hopes and Dreams Tour in February, he made it clear he considers this trek nothing less than a battle for the soul of America. He threw himself into the charge on Sunday with the gusto that’s made him one of rock’s most gargantuan stars for the past half-century.
Bruce Springsteen brought his “Land of Hope and Dreams” rock and resistance tour to President Donald Trump’s backyard on April 23 with a plea to unite in “choosing hope over fear.”
In a preamble to the three-hour concert, held a day before Trump is to arrive in Palm Beach for his 26th visit this term, Springsteen asked attendees to pray for U.S. military personnel in harm’s way.
“The Boss” then launched into a scathing indictment of the president, who just this month called the Hall of Fame rocker and music legend a “total loser” and “not a talented guy.”
Springsteen blistered the second Trump administration as “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless” as the sold-out crowd drowned him out with boisterous cheers.
The dominant theme of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s 2023-2024 concerts was mortality, with key songs such as “Ghosts,” “Last Man Standing” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams” tackling the topic head-on. With their European Land of Hope and Dreams Tour, last year, though, politics started to play a greater role. And their current Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour is even more political. And more urgent.
“We never planned this tour, but we came out because I needed to feel your hope, your strength, and I needed to hear your voices,” Springsteen, 76, said near the end of his sold-out April 20 concert at The Prudential Center in Newark. “My wish is that we brought some hope and some strength for you tonight.”
Bruce Springsteen doesn’t need to risk alienating a small but vocal fraction of his fanbase by taking a stand against what he sees as a clear and present danger to the future of America, a land he clearly loves with every fiber of his being.
But he does it anyway because that’s just how much he cares about the things that truly matter. That’s an admirable trait that Springsteen has embodied for the longest time.
And if the way the crowd responded to his most impassioned speeches taking Donald Trump to task at what appeared to be a sold-out Mortgage Matchup Center on Thursday, April 16, when the Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour hit downtown Phoenix, are any indication?
…He hadn’t even played guitar before setting…
It was clear from the opening moments of Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” concert that the Boss had a few things to say about President Donald Trump and the state of the nation. In a dramatic flash of patriotic red light, he strode onto the stage in his best proletariat preacher mode and addressed his flock.
“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times,” he proclaimed during a tour stop at San Francisco’s Chase Center on Monday, April 13. “The America that I love — the America I have written about for 50 years that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world — is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and…
Bruce Springsteen is currently on his ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’ US tour with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, a trek inspired by the Boss’ ongoing fury at the Trump regime, and in particular the killing of two Minneapolis citizens by ICE agents earlier this year.
Bruce and the E Street Band perform a 27-song set on night two at the Kia Forum in Inglewood.
Tour premieres of “Two Hearts” and “American Land” (last performed in 2017). “War”, “Clampdown” (written by Strummer/Jones, recorded by The Clash), “Streets of Minneapolis,” “House of a Thousand Guitars” (performed solo acoustic), and the show-closing cover of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” all appear; “Land of Hope and Dreams” is the main-set closer.
As the time approached 10:30 Tuesday night — nearly three hours after Bruce Springsteen had marched onstage at Inglewood’s Kia Forum alongside 18 of his musical comrades — the 76-year-old rock legend told the crowd he hadn’t intended to be there.
“This is a tour that we never planned,” he said. “The E Street Band is here with you tonight because we need to feel your hope and your strength. And we want to bring some hope and bring some strength for you.” It wasn’t impossible to believe him.
After a two-year trek that finally wrapped last summer amid the release of a massive box set and a splashy Hollywood biopic, Springsteen might’ve been expected to spend 2026 counting his money and his accolades. Yet the way…
Bruce Springsteen is out to save America with rock and roll. On Friday night, in a Moda Center packed with screaming, singing fans, it felt like he might just do it.
At 7:30 p.m., long lines still snaked around the Rose Quarter. So it was about 10 minutes after the planned start time that Springsteen and the E Street Band took the stage for the second stop of their Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour.
It was the only hiccup in what became a high-intensity all-American political-musical-spiritual experience for the rapturous crowd.
The show began with a thesis statement. “The America that I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world is…
Before a single note of music was played at the opening night of the 2026 Land of Hope and Dreams Tour, it was clear this wasn’t going to be a typical Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert. In a break from decades of tradition, the band walked onto the stage in total darkness, visible to the crowd only in hazy silhouette. Springsteen came out last, and addressed the capacity crowd at the Target Center in Minneapolis, speaking much like he did at the city’s No Kings rally a few days earlier.
“I want to begin the night with a prayer for our men and women overseas,” he said. “We pray for their safe return. The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock & roll in dangerous…
What makes a great Springsteen concert is deeply subjective and often tied to what we bring to the occasion ourselves: who went with us (my future husband!); when we saw it (the day after graduation!); how long have we been looking forward to it (finally, after 11 years the E Street Band is reuniting!).
What makes for a thrilling Springsteen concert is perhaps more definable. An element of the unexpected plays a significant role, and for those who see many shows and tours, getting songs in the set that we’ve never witnessed before. Some of the thrill lies in the risk the artist takes in playing material that’s not battle-hardened; we feel rewarded by the chances they’ve taken on us.
It’s in this context of thrilling that a night like…
Bruce Springsteen Solo Acoustic
Any reasonable interpretation of Bruce Springsteens disparate activities in the year 1995 could only lead one to conclude that he had reached a point where he didn’t know what the hell he wanted to do or where he wanted to go musically. That is, until the release of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Suddenly, everything came into focus and boy did he lock in. One might even say he never let go.
The Joad tour began in late 1995, crossed much of 1996, and was extended again into the first half of 1997, which included a ten-show Australian run and this fine fifth and final show in Sydney. Springsteen stayed on the road for two simple reasons: he immensely enjoyed the solo experience and the subject matter he was performing…
Sony Music Japan has continued its popular series of 7-inch SACD reissues with a 50th anniversary edition of Bruce Springsteen’s seminal Born to Run. The 3CD set features a new DSD remaster of the original album on stereo hybrid SACD (playable on all CD players) along with The Boss’ Greenvale, New York concert of December 12, 1975 on 2 Blu-spec CDs. The CW Post College Post Dome concert featured most of the songs from Born to Run including “Thunder Road,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Backstreets,” “She’s the One,” “Jungleland,” and, of course, the title track. (The concert also yielded Springsteen’s now-classic take on “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” which was released as a single nearly a decade later, in 1985.) The concert was issued in 2021 on…
2025 mix by Jon Altschiller.
As we enter 2026, who could have imagined the Bruce Springsteen Live Archive series would be entering its twelfth year? The first show in the series, Apollo Theater, March 9, 2012, was released in November 2014; remarkably, 100 more have followed, expanding Springsteen’s live recording canon into territory once exclusive to the Grateful Dead.
Tours from 1975 on are represented in that 100, with many covered in depth. Frustratingly to all, a few gaps remain, limited by technical challenges (#freetherisingtour) and tape availability. But the Archive series is open-ended: new sources and playback breakthroughs remain ever possible.
For this year’s holiday release, we revisit…
The 2012-2013 Wrecking Ball tour marked the start of the current incarnation of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It was the first without late, great founding members Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, and the tour served in part as a eulogy to those fallen heroes.
The passing of Phantom Dan and the Big Man also triggered major changes on stage: Wrecking Ball featured an exponential expansion of the E Street Band, ushering in a horn section, backing singers, and a percussionist — a blueprint still in use when Springsteen returned to the road in 2023 and retained through the last concert in Milan this past July.
Given how many new musicians were involved, it’s remarkable that the 2012-13 tour…
After touring solo for Devils & Dust in 2005 and stomping across stages with the Seeger Sessions Band in 2006, Bruce Springsteen’s 2007 tour with the E Street Band was a welcome return to regularly scheduled programming.
The trek was appealingly normal, in that it was simply a run of shows in support of Bruce and the band’s excellent new album Magic, released in late September. The result was more akin to outings behind Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and The River (1980) because that’s what artists did/do when they drop a new album. No bigger occasion or overarching circumstances. No multi-night residencies. Just straight up doing the job. One might think the same for 2012 with the release of Wrecking Ball, but that marked…
Nebraska occupies a pivotal place in Bruce Springsteen’s catalogue, but for some that has never been enough. Ever since the legend of Electric Nebraska – Nebraska’s band-recorded alter ego – emerged, fans have wanted to unpick the knotty relationship between Nebraska and Born in the USA and hear electrified E Street versions of this sombre acoustic album.
As recently as June 2025, Springsteen was denying Electric Nebraska even existed – and nothing appeared on the recent, epic Tracks II set – but the mythical album is finally here, thanks to the deus ex machina of Deliver Me From Nowhere, a Bruce biopic that focuses on his angsty wrestling match between artistry and commerce (spoiler alert: he could have both).
Bruce Springsteen began headlining arenas in the northeast as far back as October 1976 when he gigged two nights at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. He returned there for four concerts on the Darkness tour, and hit Madison Square Garden and Nassau Coliseum, too, then yet again in late 1980 on the River tour along with various regional Gardens and Civic Centers.
However, Springsteen wouldn’t play an arena show in his home state of New Jersey until July 1981 because, until then it didn’t have one. When the Brendan Byrne Arena opened in East Rutherford, Bruce and the E Street Band christened the future home of the Nets and Devils with a sold-out, six-show stand.
The new building already made this summer…