Bruce Springsteen's 10 Best Protest Songs
For my bimonthly Salon.com column, on the occasion of the release of "Streets of Minneapolis," I run down what I consider to be Bruce Springsteen's 10 best original protest songs. (I use the "original" qualifier in order to rule out things like Edwin Starr's "War" or the entire Seeger Sessions record, because that is honestly its own category!) You can read the whole essay here, but some highlights:
“Streets of Minneapolis” is not Springsteen’s first protest song. Across his almost 60-year career, he has addressed war, racism, state-sponsored violence, economic anxiety, and the loss of civil liberties (to name but a few). Here are some of his best moments on that aforementioned soapbox.
- Born In The USA
Quite possibly the world’s most misunderstood song, “Born In The USA” is indeed an anthem, but it is also — in the right context — 100% a protest number. In 2003, at the first Stateside show after the US invasion of Iraq, Springsteen opened the show with a blistering acoustic version whose meaning could not be misinterpreted....
- “My City of Ruins”
The closing song from 2002’s “The Rising,” the album Springsteen wrote in response to 9/11, “My City of Ruins” was actually written a couple of years earlier, inspired by the then-decades-long economic downslide of Asbury Park, NJ, Springsteen’s adopted hometown. But the composition, which is rooted in gospel traditions, was sufficiently broad and all-encompassing (yet another gospel hallmark) for the song to apply to other circumstances.
- “The Promised Land”
“The Promised Land” was released on 1978’s “Darkness On The Edge of Town,” not exactly an album remembered for its radical political leanings. But while talking with Rolling Stone journalist Paul Nelson back in the day, Springsteen noted, “My songs are all action songs. They’re action, you know. All my songs are about people at that moment when they’ve got to do something, just do something, do anything.”
So while it’s correct that this song didn’t begin its life as a protest number, sometimes art can transform itself to meet a moment. “The Promised Land” didn’t suddenly become a protest song, but it has helped Springsteen make a point or reinforce a message.
- “American Skin (41 Shots)”
In the spring of 2000, Springsteen wrote a powerful song about the shooting of unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo by the New York City Police Department. Diallo was shot 41 times, hence the song’s title, and the officers were acquitted of all charges. Springsteen’s lyrics tell what he believed to be a fair and balanced story from both the point of view of the police and that of immigrant families, but importantly, he also opens it up to include the community at large. As Springsteen writes in his memoir, “In the bridge, the lyrics ‘Is it in your heart, is it in your eyes’ ask the singer and his audience to look inside themselves for their collaboration in events.”
- “Long Walk Home”
The criminally underrated “Magic” album arrived towards the end of the second George W. Bush administration and featured a half-dozen songs — like “Livin’ In The Future,” “Last To Die,” and the title track, among others — that addressed Springsteen’s disgust at the degradation of democracy, American life and human rights. One of those songs was “Long Walk Home."
Read the full descriptions and the complete list over at Salon.
