Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” Reviewed

Bruce Springsteen released “Streets of Minneapolis” on January 28 in response to recent events involving federal agents and aggressive anti-ICE demonstrators in that city. The universe yawned audibly. This literary critic threw up in his mouth a little. Reviewing the birth of new political scripture is a rare and exhausting experience, but someone has to do it.

In “Streets of Minneapolis,” Bruce Springsteen, the aged high priest of sweat-stained denim and existential lock bowels, has apparently decided that the United States Constitution was merely a clumsy rough draft–a precursor for a series of pedestrian lyrics and a three-chord progression.

One must admire, if that is the correct word, the sheer, bloated ambition of this musical doo-doo. The Boss suggests that the federal government is not merely a collection of paper-pushing squares, but a traveling circus of “private armies” of “King Trump,” who spend their leisure time polishing their belt-mounted weaponry in the snow like over-eager Boy Scouts in the woods with a pack of cigarettes.

It is, furthermore, a bold, albeit hallucinatory, move to equate the Department of Homeland Security with a wandering band of marauders. Are we to assume the Secretary of the Interior is currently saddling up to lead a cavalry charge against a suburban Starbucks?

The vapidity of The Boss’s lyrics is particularly staggering, in the same way a drunk falling down a flight of stairs is staggering. By naming specific individuals such as Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Springsteen has abandoned the vague, poetic “Marys” and “Rosalitas” of his youth in favor of turning his effort into a soggy legal deposition. If only James Madison had possessed a Fender Esquire and a voice like a garbage disposal full of gravel, the Bill of Rights might have included a bridge and a rousing, but unnecessary, saxophone solo.

It is truly the pinnacle of half-baked political science to suggest that the fundamental solution to complex civil unrest is a repetitive “ICE out” chant that lasts significantly longer than the average local city council meeting but nowhere near as intelligent.

Furthermore, the manifesto’s insistence on “whistles and phones” as the primary defense against “dirty lies” is a stroke of revolutionary idiocy. Who needs a judicial system or a functioning legislative branch when you have a smartphone and a high-pitched plastic instrument usually reserved for drowning out the sound of actual thought? In this vision of a future, all federal policy is dictated by the loudest person at a protest and all diplomatic disputes are settled by whichever aging millionaire can hold a high C for the longest duration before his vocal cords finally surrender to the inevitable.

Finally, we must address the “Outro,” a repetitive, rhythmic assault that mimics the psychological efficacy of musical waterboarding. To conclude this masterpiece of civic participation, Springsteen bellows “ICE out” no fewer than twelve times, apparently operating under the delusion that the federal government functions like a stubborn stain that can be removed with a bit of loud, rhythmic scrubbing. It is the sort of simplistic, chanting drivel one expects from a particularly agitated toddler who has been denied a second helping of applesauce. It is a fitting end to a song that begins with fire and ice and ends with the intellectual equivalent of a man shouting at a cloud because it refused to rain on cue.

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