No fear: Bruce Springsteen admits “blowback is just part of” being a political artist
Bruce Springsteen has revealed he doesn’t worry about pushback for his political beliefs, stating that “blowback is just part of” the job.
Springsteen has always been a political singer-songwriter, but has become increasingly vocal since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office after being elected to serve a second term in 2025.
This weekend, Springsteen will perform his protest anthem ‘Streets of Minneapolis’, dedicated to Alex Pretti and Renee Good, at the No Kings rally in St Paul, Minnesota, before beginning his Land of Hope and Dreams tour in Minneapolis.
Now, ahead of his visit to Minnesota, Springsteen has opened up about receiving pushback from the detractors who disagree with him and explained that it’s never bothered him.
He told the Minnesota Star Tribune, “I don’t worry about it. My job is very simple: I do what I want to do, I say what I want to say and then people get to say what they want to say about it. Those are the rules of my game. That’s fine with me.”
‘The Boss’ added, “I don’t worry about if you’re going to lose this part of your audience. I’ve always had a feeling about the position we play culturally, and I’m still deeply committed to that idea of the band. The blowback is just part of it. I’m ready for all that.”
Looking ahead to his upcoming tour, which starts in just a few days, Springsteen promised, “The tour is going to be political and very topical about what’s going on in the country.”
The choice of cities that Springsteen will visit with The E Street Band was also politically-motivated, he revealed, “Minneapolis and St. Paul, that was the place I wanted to begin it, and I wanted to end it in Washington.”
In the same interview, Springsteen, who is 76, said of the current state of the US under the ruling of Trump, “I don’t know of another time when the country has been as critically challenged and our basic ideas and values as critically challenged as they are right now.”
He added that the last time that America felt “on edge” like this was in 1968 when he was still a teenager, before saying there is “so much at stake as far as who we are and the country we want to be and the people we want to be. It’s a critical, critical moment.”
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