They have similarities, Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump – guys in the 1970s with houses in New Jersey and great constituencies among American and older American men. And both, in very different respects, are the boss.
That’s about where it ends.
The veteran’s Rock Star, a long time a political opponent of the president, has risen as one of Trump’s most eminent cultural criticism last week with a verbal withdrawal from a British scene.
As it is his nature, Trump retaliates hard – hard. He describes Springsteen as “dried price of a rocker” and even brings Beyoncé into the fray.
Monday, the president Springsteen and Beyoncé suggested Should be the subject of an investigation to see if the appearances they made on behalf of his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, last fall, represented an illegal campaign donation.
Opening of a tour in Manchester, England, Springsteen Tell his audience Last Thursday that “America I love, America I wrote that has been a lighthouse of hope and freedom for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and betrayal administration”.
He added: “Tonight we ask all those who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to raise us with us, raise your voice against authoritarianism and let freedom sound.”
And the round trips started
Spring Referential made later to an “unfit president and a rogue government” who have “no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American”.
The next morning, Trump called Springsteen Very overrated. “I never liked it, never liked its radical left music or policy and, above all, he is not a talented guy-just an arrogant and unpleasant fool,” he wrote on social networks.
“This dried size of a rocker (his skin is atrophied) should keep his mouth closed until he returns to the country,” he said.
The following night, also in Manchester, Springsteen repeated his criticism.
“It is not surprising that Springsteen’s political trends are and have been for many decades for many decades,” said the veteran music scriptwriter Alan Light, author of the next “Do’T Stop: Why We (always) love the rumors of Fleetwood Mac”. “He’s someone who was frank in his music and actions.”
The boss’s statements this week showed that he was not afraid to express himself “at a time when so many people and institutions are somehow somehow,” said Light.
Springsteen is not new in this game
This is not the first time that Springsteen has been pronounced against Trump – or a republican president.
When former President Ronald Reagan referred to Springsteen’s “Message of Hope” during a campaign stop at the height of the “Born in the USA” popularity of rocker, Springsteen wondered if Reagan had listened to his music and his references to those who were left behind in the economy of the 1980s. He also had an occasionally jumped relationship with the presidential republican candidate and Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, fan of his music.
Springsteen campaigned for Trump’s opponents, including Harris last fall. In 2020, he said that “a good part of our beautiful country, in my eye, was completely hypnotized, washed by a spacing of the queens.”
He knows that the external reference has always stung a man who built his own Tour in Manhattan and went up to the presidency. Trump often stays in his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Springsteen has grown up in New Jersey – you may have heard – and live in Colts Neck, New Jersey, now.
Trump does not hesitate to continue the biggest musical names that denounce him, like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. But political risk can be less; Their younger and more feminine audience is less likely to meet Trump’s riding.
During his career, Springsteen challenged his public politically beyond the presidential mentions. The 1995 album “The Ghost of Tom Joad” without documenting the life of immigrants in difficulty – Mexicans and Vietnamese among them. And his song from 2001 “American Skin (41 shots)”, criticized the shooting by New York police officers of an unarmed immigrant named Amadou Diallo, in the denier some of the blue -collar segments of his fans base.
Obviously, Springsteen has conservative fans and some who wish to avoid politics, said Light. However, “40 years later, it is difficult to imagine what they think they are going” with Trump, he said.
While Trump has kept a reference to Springsteen’s criticism in a program abroad, he and the E Street Band did not occur in the United States since the 2024 elections. His tour last year struck the themes of mortality, less politics. He has planned several European tour dates planned this year in July and has not announced any new American show.
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David Bauder writes on the intersection of the media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him to http://x.com/dbauder And https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social