Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minnesota”: The Art of the Protest Flop

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Recently I heard The Boss’ musical response to all of the unrest and tumult surrounding the incidents involving ICE agents and protesters called “Streets of Minnesota”, and it elicited a very strong response from me: revulsion. To be clear, it wasn’t the subject matter that was the source of my vitriolic reaction; it was the stunning terribleness of it as a whole. It was so bad that I felt secondhand embarrassment listening to it.

The music itself is very generic and typical of the kind of bland, mediocre “I just shat this out in a day” thing you would expect from a music legend way past their prime. I could tell Bruce really wanted to convey the emotion and seriousness of the situation with his vocal delivery, but it came across like he recorded it sitting on the toilet while trying to force a stubborn turd out. Kind of a raspy toneless grunt that sounds strained and reedy that generous critics might characterize as “raw honesty,” but unbiased listeners would say sounds like shit.

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Lyric Video)

Then there are the lyrics. Again, it’s not the ivory tower boomertastic perspective itself that’s off putting, it’s the ham-fisted, blunt force simplicity of uneven verses that are devoid of any artistic hallmark. There are no metaphors, no compelling imagery, no street philosopher observations of the human condition.

Instead it comes across like a CNN reporter tried to wax poetic in their recounting of events:

Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow dead
Their claim was self-defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies

Juxtapose this with the evocative lyrics from Springsteen’s Oscar winning song for homosexual propaganda film Philadelphia, “Streets of Philadelphia“:

I was bruised and battered, I couldn’t tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
I saw my reflection in a window, I didn’t know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin’ away
On the Streets of Philadelphia

I walked the avenue, ’til my legs felt like stone
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone
At night I could hear the blood in my veins
It was just as black and whispering as the rain
On the Streets of Philadelphia

It’s hard to believe this is the work of the same man. The old Bruce knew how to make a subversive protest song that kicked ass. Most people still think that “Born In The USA” is a patriotic song. But this “Streets of Minnesota” is just sad. It actually hurts the cause Springsteen is trying to represent by being so awful.

(There is a silver lining in this though, because this song now takes the number one spot of Most Terrible Protest song formerly held by Van Morrison for his Covid-era protest song “No More Lockdown,” a torturous, repetitive, lazy jazz vamp with lyrics that sound like they were written minutes before the song was recorded. The worst part about it is I agreed with Van’s stance, but knew that didn’t matter because the song was going to rightfully be mocked for being so terrible. Again a case of a way past their prime artist shitting out some half-formed dud in order to be topical during a cultural zeitgeist.)

Now I would like to point out that not all successful protest songs were “good” in the traditional sense of the word. If you go back and listen to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” it sounds really bad. Woody couldn’t sing for shit and was kind of bad at playing guitar, too. But that didn’t matter, because what Woody crafted was so simple that it was almost like a children’s song. It had a catchy, easily sung refrain that made it resonate. Bruce has to lean heavily on black lady backup vocals to carry the weak chorus of “The Streets of Minneapolis”; it doesn’t have an innate hook. If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to hum the chorus there would be no way. If a song has a simple, resonant refrain, then sometimes that’s all you need. Another good example of this is Country Joe and the Fish’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag” at Woodstock. The song is almost tongue-in-cheek, but it succeeds because it’s so simple all those acid-soaked hippies could sing along by the song’s conclusion.

“Streets Of Minnesota” has zero ear worm potential and fails utterly in this respect.

Sometimes a protest song can get by on passion and conviction. A huge portion of the punk rock ethos was based in this kind of musical expression, with mixed results. When it was good, it was great. Jello Biafra sneering through “California Uber Alles” was peak protest art; when Ian McKaye was yelling about being judged in “Guilty of Being White,” it resonated on a gut level. It all felt authentic. When the listener feels conviction combined with kick-ass music, the result can be very powerful. When this is done with maximum effect, it will even compel a listener who is philosophically opposed to the core message. And songs like “Killing In The Name Of” or “Fortunate Son” actually transcend the standard protest song format to become legitimate bangers.

In a band like Rage Against The Machine especially, you can see how much conviction and authenticity matters; it fuses with good riffs to make the dynamite. Zack de la Rocha was so real, I think he quit because he felt guilty making all that money from the greedy capitalist evil empire and couldn’t live with the hypocrisy. Of course Tom Morello has no problem or ideological conflict; he’s a Harvard-trained Marxist and ruthless political operator. He is a man that will tell you he is a proletariat fighting for social equity in a corrupt supremacist system and turn around and shill his “Arm The Homeless” guitars for $1,700 each. Tom is an innovative guitar player, but without the singer and the passion to inspire the real Rage, he sucks. Audioslave was way tepid compared to RATM or Soundgarden, the Prophets of Rage went nowhere, and Nightwatchmen stuff just straight up sucks.

Springsteem is trying to act like he cares as much about this as he did about the veterans in ’81 (for the record, Bruce has been involved with helping Vietnam Veterans for decades as well as other charitable acts, which is to be commended even though “Streets of Minnesota” is an abomination) or the plight of the homeless and disenfranchised he documented in the haunting and poetic “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” but it comes across as an on-the-fly rant done from inside a parked car on TikTok. There is no poetry, no thoughtful insight, no images that transcend surface politics and get at the heart of the human experience. Instead it’s a turgid slog expressing the same exact positions, slogans, and perspective of a political collective insulated from narrative balance (and yeah, the right too, but not nearly as often) and devoid of any desire to have their worldview influenced by uncomfortable truths.

There is no reason for it to exist, other than for Bruce Springsteen (hang on… I’m gonna check and see how old he is… that old fucker is 76! Wow! No wonder he comes across as a crotchety old man) to try and remain culturally relevant, and I think it’s a glaring, stinky shit stain at the end of a long career with many artistic peaks. Good job, Bruce. You really made a difference.

If anyone is wondering what the best protest song of all time is, the answer is “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye. That sound is so good, even the guy who was dropping napalm on the Cong had it in his record collection. If you make it that good, you can say whatever you want and at least people will listen even if they don’t agree.

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