Bruce Springsteen’s new song Radio Nowhere features one of his old rallying cries – “Is there anybody alive out there?”
Yesterday, he turned up on the Today show in the United States to ask that question again.
Whereas ‘regular’ superstars write easy listening love songs and elegies to Princess Diana, Springsteen has cast his net wider than any other major artist. He wrote a whole album about the exploitation of migrant workers (The Ghost of Tom Joad), and has written songs about police brutality and the Iraq war.
He defended the Dixie Chicks against right-wing America and attacked President Bush over his failures in New Orleans.
During the Today appearance he listed many great things about America.
Then he added: “But over the past six years we’ve had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeus corpus, the neglect of our great city New Orleans and its people, an attack on the Constitution. And the loss of our young best men and women in a tragic war.
“This is a song about things that shouldn’t happen here—happening here.”
Leave a Reply