{"id":559794,"date":"2026-04-02T07:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T07:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/559794\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T07:22:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T07:22:13","slug":"bruce-springsteen-opens-land-of-hope-and-dreams-tour-concert-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/559794\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Springsteen Opens ‘Land of Hope and Dreams” Tour: Concert Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFirst of all, let\u2019s dispense with some Bruce Springsteen<\/a> mythology: It is a fallacy that all his concerts last three hours. Opening a fresh tour Tuesday night at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Springsteen and the E Street Band turned in a performance that lasted exactly 2 hours and 54 minutes, stem to stern, with no real encore break. Accuracy is important, right?<\/p>\n

\n\tHere\u2019s something else that\u2019s accurate: You will probably never see a better rock \u2018n\u2019 roll show than the one that Springsteen and company gave to kick off the \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams American Tour.\u201d Unless maybe it\u2019s one of the 19 remaining concerts on this relatively short run, which was conceived as something fairly close to an actual pop-up arena tour. At 76, Springsteen has lost virtually nothing, apart from a willingness to destroy his knees. What he\u2019s gained is considerable, and isn\u2019t measured in pure physicality, \u00a0although the pure endurance factor of still seeming in the prime of his performing life is awfully impressive. Minneapolis knew it was in good \u2014 no, great \u2014 hands early in Tuesday\u2019s show when, singing \u201cDarkness on the Edge of Town,\u201d he stretched out the last occurence of the word tooooooooown into an elongated rasp as primal as any of the howls I\u2019ve heard him do.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut what does darkness mean to Bruce Springsteen, in 2026? Well, as somebody once said, it\u2019s the place where democracy dies. The \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams\u201d trek is being characterized as his first real \u201cpolitical\u201d tour, which he hasn\u2019t done anything to discourage, and which seems fair enough, even if the four topical speeches he gives over the course of the evening ultimately make up only a tiny bit of the (nearly) three hours. Yes, that\u2019s right, four speeches \u2014 which are actually quite galvanizing, if you\u2019re down for a few minutes of \u201cSpringsteen on Broadway Via the Atlantic\u201d here and there. It\u2019s not even just the content of what he\u2019s saying (which, sure, it\u2019s helpful to agree with, if you don\u2019t want to be squirming in your seat on this tour). It\u2019s the way they form a connective tissue that helps reinforce the storytelling that he\u2019s doing through his choice of catalog songs.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot many veteran artists have what it takes to shape an entire set around a specific theme. Generally, they\u2019d lack either the material or the moxie for that. It becomes all the more difficult if the subject matter the performer is focusing on is something that some factions in the audience might find challenging. Like: mortality, and malignant presidencies. Bruce Springsteen, bless him, has had his way with both now, in successive major tours. When he toured the world in 2024, his basic setlist and between-song chater leaned in hard on issues of loss, grief and the importance life takes on when you realize how finite it is. Only afterward did some attendees really get what he was up to there. For this 2026 outing, he\u2019s being much more blatant about what it\u2019s mostly all about: Maybe you saw the \u201cNo Kings\u201d logo in the initial advertising. Most artists would be compelled, if they\u2019re going to respond in current events in their art at all, to do a protest song. Springsteen did that with his recent anti-ICE single, \u201cStreets of Minneapolis\u201d (the reason for starting out this run in the Twin Cities). But he\u2019s also doing that rarest of things, so rare I can\u2019t really think of another example among major contemporary artists: a protest tour.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a flex, and surely seems like an unnecessary one to Springsteen\u2019s many detractors on the MAGA side, who are chagrined \u2014 after all that \u201cgo woke, go broke\u201d talk \u2014 to learn that 20,000 people a night welcome the chance to hear their favorite artist be as disturbed about the downfall of civility and empathy as they are. They will say that everyone attending these shows is suffering from \u201cTDS.\u201d But looking around the Target Center, where I saw a lot of Minnesotas relieved to be in the company of others who have felt as sad or chagrined as they have, I thought: Somehow, Trump Derangment Syndrome feels good in a place like this.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIf anyone thought Springsteen would beat around the bush in getting to the point in these shows, they thought wrong. He didn\u2019t even wait till the first song had commenced \u2014a revisiting of his old cover of the 1970 Edwin Starr hit, \u201cWar\u201d \u2014 before offering the night\u2019s first speech, or invocation. \u201cI want to begin the night with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas \u2014 we pray for their safe return. The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll in dangerous times. We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals, democracy, our Constitution, and our sacred American promise. The America I love, the America that I\u2019ve written about for 50 years that\u2019s been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over\u2026\u201d A pause, and the band was struck up. \u201cWar! What is it good for?\u201d A rousing opener, for starters\u2026 and an intro that alluded to the Iran \u201cexcursion\u201d without outrightly mentioning it.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBruce Springsteen interacts with a fan\u2019s sign at his tour opening in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 31, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Vietnam-era theme continued with the second number, \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d Then E Street Band got Irish with anotheer everything\u2019s-gone-to-shit anthem, the deceptively sprightly \u201cDeath to My Hometown,\u201d a concert favorite since the \u201cWrecking Ball\u201d era. Soon came a series of songs that don\u2019t seem so socially conscious in origin, but can easily be made to read that way in a \u201cpolitical\u201d set\u201d: \u201cNo Surrender.\u201d \u201cThe Promised Land.\u201d \u201cDarkness on the Edge of Town.\u201d (\u201cEverybody\u2019s got a secret, Sonny\u201d now sounded like it was about America\u2019s collective underbelly, not some rando\u2019s kink.) \u201cOut in the Street\u201d could be about folks marching out in the street for No Kings Day, if you used your imagination, or maybe just the celebration to be who we are in public without fear, which not every left-of-center is American is taking for granted forever anymore.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe rode that wave into a pick-me-up section of the show, knowing that his cautionary tour needs as many peaks as valleys in the setlist. It would hardly be an E Street show without joy, and lots of it. Much of that came in the small interchanges between the Boss and his band members, as if they were really rediscovering small delights on their first official night on duty. Springsteen seemed to be tickled, for some reason, by whatever Stevie Van Zandt was doing with his part of the customary call-and-response that always comes up at the end of \u201cOut in the Street.\u201d\u00a0 And something about the way Nils Lofgren was playing the guitar intro to \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams\u201d caused Springsteen to giggle at length, for reasons unknown to the audience. Springsteen got a truly goofy grin on when he walked up on Max Weinberg\u2019s riser to compel the drummer, who is not normally employed as a background vocalist, to sing lead on a few bars of \u201cHungry Heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBruce Springsteen coaxes drummer Max Weinberg to sing lead vocals at his tour opening in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 31, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/p>\n

\n\tMessage: Springsteen is pissed these days. But also, very playful\u2026 a good combo if you can get it in one impassioned package.<\/p>\n

\n\tGravity returned with the rust-belt-gone-wrong song \u201cYoungstown,\u201d the thunderous evocation of everyday violence in \u201cMurder Incorporated,\u201d and the first song Springsteen wrote about real-life police violence, \u201cAmerican Skin (41 Shots).\u201d The latter number is so presciently akin to the new \u201cStreets of Minneapolis\u201d that it\u2019s no wonder he placed them in different parts of the set, so as not to leave the audience wallowing too long in the abuse of authority at any one time, even if they\u2019d make effective twins.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe album that might be Springsteen\u2019s most truly political, \u201cMagic,\u201d got only one play in the night\u2019s set, with \u201cLong Walk Home,\u201d introduced as \u201ca prayer for our country.\u201d Written in the Bush era, it suggests a limit to how aberrant American government policy could ever become: \u201cYour flag flyin\u2019 over the courthouse \/ Means certain things are set in stone \/ Who we are, what we\u2019ll do and what we won\u2019t\u201d \u2014 a hope of restraint that now feels impossibly quaint. He let the band members take a break and entered solo acoustic mode for \u201cHouse of a Thousand Guitars,\u201d a \u201cLetter to You\u201d song that he didn\u2019t get around to slipping into his setlists until last year in Europe. Like a lot of the more familiar Springsteen songs brought onto this setlist, it\u2019s a tune that manages to cover multiple subjects at once: the loss of an old friend, the eternal healing power of stacks of amps, and \u2014 written during the first Trump administration \u2014 the distress that a \u201ccriminal clown has stolen the throne.\u201d (If he felt that was during the president\u2019s calmer first term, no wonder Springsteen is going full-time with his dismay now.)<\/p>\n

\n\tRage Against the Machine veteran Tom Morello is a featured guitarist on the tour, as he was in the \u201cWrecking Ball\u201d days \u2014 because the E Street Band needs four capable lead guitarists, not just three. As a bird of a feather when it comes to Bruce\u2019s political leanings, but also as a confimed shredder, he brings further audience-pleasing fireworks to provide ensurance nothing ever feels funereal for long in this show. Some might argue that his magic tricks are a little too showy for the material; when he provides \u201cThe Ghost of Tom Joad\u201d with duet parts on both lead vocals and guitar, it comes to feel a little like it\u2019s the ghost of Steve Vai that is being summoned. But he\u2019s a strong additional foil, in a band full of them, and earns the solo T-shirts that he has placed in the merch booth.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Morello, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band perform during Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour at Target Center on March 31, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKevin Mazur\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTom Joad,\u201d as a period piece, didn\u2019t put a name to the men and women who might\u2019ve been responsible for migrant workers\u2019 plight. In 2026, Springsteen names names, and not only Trump\u2019s. \u201cOur Justice Department has completely abdicated its independence,\u201d he said during the lengthiest speec of the night, \u201cand our attorney general, Pam Bondi, takes her marching orders straight from a corrupt White House. She prosecutes our president\u2019s perceived enemies, covers up for his misdeeds, and protects his powerful friends. \u2026 The richest men in America have abandoned the world\u2019s poorest children through death and disease through their dismantling of USAID. \u2026 We are abandoning NATO and the world order that\u2019s kept us safe and at global peace for 80 years. \u2026 We threaten our neighbors and our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars with a predatory annexation of their lands. \u2026. Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts, like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can\u2019t handle the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it was a night that specifically kept coming back to Minnesota, and its revered citizens living and dead. \u201cHer last words to the person who killed her, to the man who would take her life, she said, \u2018That\u2019s fine, dude, I\u2019m not mad at you.\u2019 I\u2019m not mad \u2014 God bless her. Tonight, when you go home, hold your loved ones close, and tomorrow, do as Ren\u00e9e did: find a way to take aggressive, peaceful action to defend our country\u2019s ideals. As the great civil rights leader John Lewis said, \u2018Go out and get in some good trouble.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGood and Alex Pretti were not the last Minnesotans whose spirits were summoned. After saying the next number was \u201cfor the maestro,\u201d Springsteen sang Prince\u2019s \u201cPurple Rain,\u201d as he had in concert only a rare handful of times before. And tnen, after a \u201cTenth Avenue Freeze Out\u201d that had Springsteen doing some exuberant, glad-handing ramp work, he settled down for a finale of Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cChimes of Freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBruce Springsteen interacts with a fan\u2019s sign at his tour opening in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 31, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Willman\/Variety<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tour\u2019s namesake, \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams,\u201d feels strong enough to end the show, as it once did a quarter-century ago. (Instead it merely serves as the finale to the main segment of the set, wherein the lights go dark for a few seconds while the band just remains on stage, too long in this game to go through any motions about a pretend encore, and with enough stamina to not need to go towel off after two and a half hours.) It\u2019s one of the greatest secular-gospel songs ever written \u2014 the tune where Springsteen plays Jesus just long enough to tell us that we\u2019re all whores and sinners on this bus \u2014 and it just gets better every year that it becomes even more of a delivery system for a climactic Max Weinberg drum solo that really does feel like a slice of heaven. Who wouldn\u2019t want to get on board?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, 40-50% of the population, we\u2019re told, by the naysayers who insist that Springsteen is losing half his audience with polarizing positions like the ones he\u2019s expressing at greater and bolder length than ever in this show. Maybe the fans who were supposed to ditch him already left years or decades ago, and what\u2019s left are the folks think advocating for empathy is a niche position. The houses remain full, as well as rocking, anyway; it\u2019s a hell of a remnant. As the man says, we\u2019re all going to need a good companion for this part of the ride; it\u2019s heartening to be at a show where you feel like you\u2019re surrounded by 20,000 candidates for the position.<\/p>\n

\n\tSetlist for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 31, 2026:<\/p>\n

\n\tWar
Born in the U.S.A.
Death to My Hometown
No Surrender
Darkness on the Edge of Town
Streets of Minneapolis
The Promised Land
Out in the Street
Hungry Heart
Youngstown
Murder Incorporated
American Skin (41 Shots)
Long Walk Home
House of a Thousand Guitars
My City of Ruins
Because the Night
Wrecking Ball
The Rising
The Ghost of Tom Joad
Badlands
Land of Hope and Dreams
Born to Run
Bobby Jean
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Purple Rain
Chimes of Freedom<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBruce Springsteen & the E Street Band debut The Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour at Target Center on March 31, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Copyright 2026 David Sherman Photography (Photo by David A. Sherman)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDavid Sherman Photography<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First of all, let\u2019s dispense with some Bruce Springsteen mythology: It is a fallacy that all his concerts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[16755,88],"class_list":["post-559794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}