From the promised land to the streets of Minneapolis: Bruce's music vs. ICE, in the winter of '26

February 1, 2026

Eleven days before the release of "Streets of Minneapolis," Bruce Springsteen stood onstage during his first public appearance of the new year, at Light of Day's Winterfest 2026. He already had played a song with Willie Nile and his band earlier in the evening, and was now in the midst of playing a fourteen-songs set with his longtime friend/collaborator Joe Grushecky and his great band the Houserockers. Before performing the next song, Springsteen delivered an impassioned, prepared speech against, as he put it that night, "heavily armed, masked federal troops invading an American city and using Gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens... [I]f you believe you don't deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest... then send a message to this President, and as the mayor of that city has said, 'ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.' Well, this song is for you, and in the memory of mother of three and American citizen Renee Good. Thank you..."

Of course, Springsteen couldn't perform "Streets of Minneapolis" that evening even if he wanted to do so, since he hadn't yet written it. The ICE murder of Alex Pretti, the other Minneapolis citizen and victim who would be named in "Streets..." along with Renee Good, was still a week away, as well. So instead the song that followed his speech was a powerful version of "The Promised Land," which just moments before Springsteen had identified as "probably one of my greatest songs...an ode to American possibility...both to the beautiful but flawed country that we are, and to the country that we could be." For decades now, it's also been chief among his handful of usual go-to songs whenever he's performed at political rallies, demonstrations, etc. And on that night at WinterFest '26, it again served that purpose well, right after Springsteen had so clearly spoken his mind about the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in this country's City of Lakes.

It was an extra-fitting choice, too, because it's highly likely that Springsteen's "The Promised Land" was at least partly inspired by Chuck Berry's great song "Promised Land," which itself was apparently inspired by the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. W.T. Lhamon, Jr. observed in his excellent 2002 book Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s that many of the locations Berry sang of passing through on his way to "the promised land" actually were key Civil Rights Movement battlegrounds, including where Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered in the heat of Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964. "Beneath his smiling patina," wrote Lhamon, "Berry's song is as apocalyptic as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last speech [during which King asserted on the night before his assassination, in the midst of already-known threats to his life, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land!"]… Reverend King and Chuck Berry shared images and concepts that stem from a root source… But so much incantation of the phrases betrays doubt about their claims. King, Berry and their followers both believed and disbelieved in America as a promised land, were sure that democracy was real and sure that it was a carrot cruelly eluding its most dogged pursuers."

On the night before Springsteen released "Streets of Minneapolis," Living Colour used their version of another Springsteen song to comment on ICE's ongoing and deadly actions. Along with a clip of their moving version of "American Skin (41 Shots)" from the 2001 Montreux Jazz Festival, the band posted on its social media, "We’re posting this because the song keeps being proven right. This is our live cover of Bruce Springsteen’s 'American Skin (41 Shots)' — a reminder that state violence isn’t abstract. It has names. It has families. It has echoes that don’t fade when the headlines move on. We say their names: Alex Pretti, Renée Nicole Good, Keith Porter Jr., Parady La, Heber Sanchaz Dominguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nuñez Cáceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos. Each name represents a life lost in encounters shaped by criminalization, militarized enforcement, and systems that treat people as disposable. This is what 'law and order' looks like when humanity is removed from the equation. Music can’t bring anyone back — but it can refuse silence. It can refuse normalization. It can insist on dignity. Watch the clip. Sit with it. Share it. No human being is illegal. Justice doesn’t come from fear."

Whatever else it is or will become, "Streets of Minneapolis," in some significant ways, is already unlike anything else that Bruce Springsteen has done before. Without a doubt, he's never previously recorded and released a song that he wrote just days before doing so. This song is also the most specific, detailed, "naming-names-and-reporting" style of "current-events-ripped-from-the-headlines" songwriting of his that he's ever let the world hear. Sure, some of his "looking-back-on-history" material released over the years, even like last year's finally-released "Inyo," is filled with a large amount of those kinds of details, too, but nothing previously written/released about such a contemporary issue at the time, as was "American Skin (41 Shots)", has ever gotten as specific as this. I guess the closest he's ever come before "Streets of Minneapolis" in this regard, at least in terms of officially released material, would be "Atlantic City," which was written circa 1981, namechecking Phil "The Chicken Man" Testa while referring to his having been murdered in March 1981, and also referring to New Jersey's Casino Control Commission, though not by its proper name. Nevertheless, the specific names and references in "Atlantic City" are only about a quarter of those found in "Streets of Minneapolis."

Unlike in Living Colour's social-media post above, the only ICE victims named in "Streets of Minneapolis" are white, for obvious reasons. But the song also makes it crystal-clear that the songwriter is far from being among those who seem concerned only when white people are threatened and killed, or who don't see the connections between racism, xenophobia, and how they ultimately can harm - or even kill - white people as well as people of color. "If your skin is black or brown, my friend," Springsteen pointedly sings in the final verse, "you can be questioned or deported on sight." I'm sure that those lines, ringing with an undeniable truth (despite there still being many repeatedly seeking to deny it anyway,) were included there with deep, thoughtful deliberateness, and that Bruce Springsteen remains among our greatest white songwriters with working-class roots who also have the clearest understandings of race and class in the U.S.

It's clear that Springsteen also chose the term "stranger in our midst" for his song's chorus, with great songwriting skill and much purpose behind it. Anyone familiar with the Torah and/or the Bible knows Exodus 23:9, in which God, through Moses, instructs the Israelites, "Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." God issues similar instructions through Moses in Leviticus 19:33-34: "And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt..."

Of course it's absolutely ludicrous for any of those who support ICE's agenda and actions to claim any kind of religious/moral high ground in the face of such textual references, though again I'm also sure that many will continue to do so anyway. After all, according to what Trump White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson told The Hollywood Reporter when asked about "Streets of Minneapolis," Bruce Springsteen simply has written and released a song "with irrelevant opinions and inaccurate information." In other words, to quote "Streets of Minneapolis" itself, "Just don't believe your eyes." (That line, incidentally, echoes those lines in Springsteen's George-W-Bush-era song "Magic:" "Trust none of what you hear, and less of what you see. This is what will be.")

And by the way, when it comes to believing one's eyes, the official lyric video for "Streets of Minneapolis" supports and amplifies this song so well. Kudos to Thom Zimny - and his key collaborators this time around, Samuel Shapiro and Pam Springsteen - for so quickly and effectively delivering a video that greatly increases the impact, reach, and power of the music it accompanies.

We have yet to know fully just how extensive the impact of "Streets of Minneapolis" will be, but it's important to rely on accurate measures for such analyses. For example, I've seen more than a few Springsteen fans and others continue to post variations of the claim that "Streets of Minneapolis" has topped iTunes charts in at least 19 countries. While the reliable verification site Snopes.com has confirmed this claim, it also exposed the essential weakness of such a statistic. "An important caveat here," Snopes.com reported, "is that iTunes charts do not include data from streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. They count only the number of times a song has been purchased and downloaded through the iTunes platform." This 2022 Jezebel article, "Going to No. 1 on iTunes Isn’t the Big Achievement It Sounds Like," remains very useful reading on this subject. For all of their ongoing issues and faults, the most accurate barometers of how much attention a given record is actually getting in the 21st century remain the various Billboard charts, and as of this writing "Streets of Minneapolis" has yet to appear on any of them. (If it is going to appear eventually on any of the Billboard charts, that wouldn't happen until the week after its release, at the earliest, given how Bilboard's data-collection and posting process works. One encouraging if less-cited fact, however, is that "Streets of Minneapolis" is currently Number 1 on YouTube Music's "Trending Music" chart.)

Whatever total level of attention and impact this song eventually generates, I for one am already very glad that Bruce Springsteen has written and recorded it. "Streets of Minneapolis" relates important facts and an essential message of hope and resistance. I think the full-band-with-E-Street-Choir arrangement was the correct way to go here, too. It's not only more sonically interesting and pleasing, but it better conveys the sound and spirit behind many different voices in the beloved community rising up to support each other and band together in organized, non-violent resistance to ICE's deliberate, vicious attacks. In the midst of a modern-day struggle, it evokes the spirit - and even some of the musical and lyrical approaches - of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and yes, Pete Seeger through Springsteen's own mid-2000s work with The (Seeger) Sessions Band.

On this past Friday, two days after releasing his recording of the song, Bruce sang "Streets of Minneapolis" as a solo-acoustic performance at a venue on... well, the streets of Minneapolis, of course. He joined Tom Morello and others onstage at the legendary First Avenue club - Prince and the Revolution's former stomping grounds - for a lunchtime concert/rally preceding another large organized event outside the club, and in the cold streets of the city, protesting ICE's continued occupation and operations. Not surprisingly, fan-shot videos and live-streams of Bruce's performance quickly popped up on the internet, and it wasn't long before a friend of mine texted me, asking me what I thought of the solo-acoustic version of "Streets of Minneapolis."

I texted back to her that, while I thought it was "okay," I remain partial to the officially released studio version, with the full band and backing vocalists, which I still think is much stronger. That noted, however, I also added, "The song itself isn't the kind of easy-to-sing-along-with composition that would work well for rally/protest/picket-line singalongs, like, say, 'This Land Is Your Land' and so many of the Civil Rights-era classics do. But again, I'm okay with that. I'm just glad that he's still out there doing his part, standing up for what he believes, etc. That in and of itself remains very encouraging and inspiring, y'know?"

Is "Streets of Minneapolis" one of the greatest songs that Bruce Springsteen has ever written? Of course not, given the extremely high standard that his own catalog sets for himself as well as all other songwriters, but I also think that currently analyzing or evaluating it that way misses the point. I think it's a very good song overall, and if right now it helps to give at least some folks in Minneapolis and elsewhere - myself included - some badly needed inspiration, information, and/or support, then it will have done its job well enough for this moment. And this moment is all that really matters for this song, at least for the time being. Here's hoping that as soon as a year or two beyond now, the U.S. political landscape will have improved enough that we'll have the "luxury" of critically analyzing more deeply this song's strengths and weaknesses in greater detail. I look forward to that possibility.

After he performed "Streets of Minneapolis" by himself on Friday, Bruce then joined concert/rally organizer Tom Morello, his band, and other guests for two more songs: the Morello-inspired electric version of "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and a truncated cover of John Lennon's "Power To The People" (on which Bruce played and sang, but didn't take any lead vocals.) Hearing "The Ghost of Tom Joad" felt to me like coming full-circle on everything about which I've been thinking and writing here, because it helped me to remember and reconnect to something that Bruce said and did back in late 1996, while touring behind his The Ghost of Tom Joad album that year.

He appeared at the October 27th Anti-Proposition 209 Rally in Los Angeles, and just before singing a solo-acoustic version of - you guessed it - "The Promised Land," he said the following, which might as well serve as "marching orders" for all of us in the rest of '26 and beyond, on the streets of Minneapolis and wherever else there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air: "I believe that Promised Land that Martin Luther King so eloquently envisioned and died for is still attainable, but it's not here and we're not there. It's somewhere up ahead... maybe in my kids' future, maybe in your kids' future. I hope so, but right now we need to protect the tool that will allow us to build the kind of country where future generations will find their opportunities, their rights and their dreams well-protected. That's our job now... Let's stand together in defense of that Promised Land."

-special thanks to Greg Drew, Lisa Iannucci, and Joyce Millman