Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band: Land of Hope & Dreams EP

This post combines my two interests: politics (which I write about over on Substack) and music (which I write about here). The new Springsteen Land of Hope & Dreams EP has motivated me to combine those interests with a review of the EP. This is a rare cross-post – this post first appeared on my Substack.

On May 14, 2025, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band opened their Land of Hope & Dreams Tour in Manchester, England. Highlights from that first night are now available on streaming services as the Land of Hope & Dreams EP. The EP is a couple of political anti-Trump rants and four, what we used to call, protest songs. Springsteen is using his platform to inform Europe that Trump does not represent all of America, and for us Americans, a pick-me-up.

The EP opens with a political rant that includes these remarks:

“…the America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration. Tonight we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”

His fellow septuagenarian and sometime New Jersey resident (at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster), Donald Trump, was unhappy with Springsteen’s rant and demanded that he be “investigated.” Trump went on to say on Truth Social in response to Springsteen’s rant:

“Never liked him, never liked his music or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — just a pushy, obnoxious JERK. This dried out prune of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back in the Country.”

Springsteen then performs his 1999 song “Land of Hope and Dreams.” The song was performed live for years before the studio version appeared on The Boss’ 2012 album Wrecking Ball. It is a song that offers hope near the end of Wrecking Ball, an album largely about the despair of the American people in the aftermath of the Great Recession in 2008. On this EP, the song ends with a snippet of The Impressions’ “People Get Ready”, written by Curtis Mayfield. The performance on the EP is inspired. “Land of Hope and Dreams” is a fitting song for our times.

Next is “Long Walk Home,” which Bruce introduces as: “This is a prayer for my country.” The song first appeared on the 2007 Springsteen album Magic. When the song first came out, Springsteen told The New York Times that it was a song about how he felt during the George W. Bush administration:

“In that particular song a guy comes back to his town and recognizes nothing and is recognized by nothing. The singer in ‘Long Walk Home,’ that’s his experience. His world has changed. The things that he thought he knew, the people who he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers. The world that he knew feels totally alien.

Another song that is on the nose for our times.

Springsteen goes on another rant as an intro to “My City of Ruins” from his 2002 album The Rising. The song was initially written as an elegy for Asbury Park, New Jersey, but the song took on new meaning as a message of hope following the September 11 attacks. The whole Manchester rant is worth including here:

Now, there’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now.

In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.

In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.

In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they’re rolling back historic Civil Rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society, they’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.

They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.

They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American. The America that I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people.

So we’ll survive this moment.

Now, I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, in this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like. But there’s enough.

Let’s pray.”

This version of the song is wonderfully uplifting, and again, this is an excellent song for the moment.

Springsteen ends the EP (and based on the intro, the last song of the concert) with a Dylan cover: “Chimes of Freedom.” The song depicts the thoughts and feelings of the narrator and his companion as they shelter from a lightning storm under a doorway after sunset. The singer expresses his solidarity with the downtrodden and oppressed, believing that the thunder is tolling in sympathy for them. Springsteen and the E Street Band make the 1964 Dylan classic into a horn-fueled anthem for our time.

Land of Hope & Dreams EP is not the kind of album you will play on repeat, but it is worth a half hour of your time as a pick-me-up from the nation’s current state.

Keep up the good work, Bruce! Thanks for reminding us, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”