There’s a moment in a Bruce Springsteen gig—every one I’ve seen anyway, and there’s been many—where you realise, quite simply, that you’re watching the greatest live performer who has ever walked on a stage.
These moments take on different forms. At the MEN (as it was) back in ’99, it was the first song: “My Love Will Not Let You Down.” At Villa Park in 2023, it came when “Born in the U.S.A.” kicked off.
Here, tonight, it comes about an hour in. Springsteen and the E Street Band (and they appear to be expanding!) strike up “Murder Incorporated” for the first time since 2017—and they spit it like a punk rock song.
The vitriol it contains is perfect for tonight. The opening night of the Land of Hope and Dreams tour had begun with a speech about the state of his homeland, and to play the song it was named after first made it clear: the world outside is going to hell in hedge fund. In here, though, we are a community. And we have music.
It always feels like the music is secondary to the feeling at a Springsteen show. The euphoria. The love. But that neglects the fact that he’s also perhaps the finest songwriter and storyteller there is.
“Death to My Hometown” marches with a folk beat, and the power of music seems to flow through the Manchester air when they get to “Lonesome Day.”
Later in the night, Springsteen makes a speech excoriating Trump—it was powerful in that he clearly meant it, but whether music can change the world in 2025, I’m not sure. What I am certain of is that when he talks about “the America I love and have been singing about to you for 50 years,” he’s really talking about the universality of what he does. These words touch 25,000.
There’s a song debut in “Rainmaker,” which distills his anger—and that bursts forth once more in “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”
The delight of seeing “Youngstown” is the chance to watch Nils Lofgren play the most amazing solo—he actually eclipses it later during “Because the Night.” That one segues into the aforementioned “…Incorporated” before “act one,” if you will, ends with a plaintive “Long Walk Home,” which he begins with a simple: “This is a prayer for America.”
The band disappears, and for five minutes, one man and his acoustic guitar hold the biggest indoor arena in Britain captivated with a magnificent arrangement of “House of a Thousand Guitars.”
Because of the gravitas of the artist and the gravity of the moment, it’s tempting to read into everything here—but the polemic before “City of Ruins” is astonishing. Just as astonishing, though, was hearing him do “Human Touch,” dusted off again tonight.
I wrote after Villa in ’23 that the thing about Springsteen is his songs just sound better live. “Wrecking Ball” most assuredly does.
I always think of a Springsteen gig as having an arc. If it does, then “The Rising” ends act two with a blockbuster, before “Badlands” starts up.
In my notes last night after that track, I wrote these words: Take us home, Bruce. And it feels like that with “Thunder Road,” before a de facto encore (they never leave the stage) sees some of the hits. The “Born in the U.S.A.”/“Born to Run” one-two punch with the house lights up still floors you, no matter how many times you see it. Likewise “Bobby Jean” and “Dancing in the Dark.” Indeed, who but this band could make something so euphoric out of something so raw?
He goes walkies on “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” and the Big Man and Danny Federici are still there. Still with the band. Still with us.
The final song was a shock: “Chimes of Freedom,” for the first time since 1988. And it seems apt that a show with so much faith in the majority against authoritarianism ends with a song about freedom.
In that blazing speech before “…Ruins,” he said, “There’s not enough humanity in the world, but there’s enough.”
The best of it was here tonight—and it had a soundtrack to empower it.
