'Let freedom ring': The Boss launches European tour by denouncing Trump as 'corrupt, incompetent and treasonous'

Bruce Springsteen received thunderous applause from the audience in Manchester, England as he kicked off his 2025 Land of Hope and Dreams European tour Wednesday night with a strong denunciation of the “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous” Trump administration.

After walking on stage, Springsteen told the crowd:

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll, in dangerous times. In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and 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 experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring. This is ‘Land of Hope and Dreams.”

In better times, just four years ago, Springsteen performed a solo acoustic guitar version of “Land of Hope and Dreams” at the start of the Biden Inaugural Committee’s television special, “Celebrating America,” on the evening of Jan. 20, 2021.

The song includes lyrics like:

Yeah, leave behind your sorrows
Let this day be the last
Well, tomorrow there'll be sunshine
And all this darkness past

And:

I said this train, dreams will not be thwarted
This train, faith will be rewarded
This train, hear the steel wheels singing
This train, bells of freedom ringing

Springsteen and the E-Street Band ended the number by referencing The Impressions’ “People Get Ready,” written by Curtis Mayfield, which became an anthem of the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s.

Rolling Stone wrote:

He followed up “Land of Hope and Dreams” with “Death to My Hometown,” a politically-charged song from his 2012 LP Wrecking Ball about how rapacious corporate greed contributed to the Great Recession of 2007/08.

A bit later in the concert, Springsteen introduced "Rainmaker" from his 2020 album "Letter to You" by saying: "This is for our Dear Leader." Rolling Stone wrote that it was the first time Springsteen performed "Rainmaker" in a concert setting.

Rolling Stone wrote:

The song is a cautionary tale about how demagogues exploit desperate people by offering easy answers to their problems. “Rainmaker says white’s black and black’s white,” Springsteen sings. “Says night’s day and day’s night/Says close your eyes and go to sleep now/I’m in a burnin’ field unloadin’ buckshot into low clouds.”

The theme of economic desperation and dislocation continued later in the show with “My Hometown” (“Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows/And vacant stores”) and “Youngstown” (“Now the yards just scrap and rubble/He said, ‘Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do,'”)

Before playing  “My City of Ruins,” Springsteen delivered an impassioned condemnation of the abuses committed by Donald Trump and his cronies.

“There’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous shit going on out there. 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.

“And in my country, they are taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they are rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and moral society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.

“They are 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 for what it means to be deeply American. The America l'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.”

“My City of Ruins,” was originally written for Springsteen’s hometown, Asbury Park, N.J., which had suffered through an economic depression, but took on new meaning when lyrics were added to reflect the 9/11 tragedy. It offers a message of hope, rebirth and the resilience of our country. There’s the repeated chorus of “Come on, rise up!”

Before his song “House of a Thousand Guitars,” Springsteen said:

“The last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed are the people, you and me.

“It’s in the union of people around a common set of values now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. At the end of the day, all we've got is each other.”

The Boss’ Manchester concert featured an array of his iconic hits including “Born to Run,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town, “Thunder Road,” and, of course, “Born in the U.S.A.”

Springsteen closed the concert with his cover of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.”  The United Classic Rock website said it was the first time Springsteen had performed the Dylan song since 1988.

That performance was in East Berlin on July 19, 1988 – a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Springsteen told the crowd of several hundred thousand (translated from the German): "It’s nice to be in East Berlin. I want to tell you that I’m not here for or against any government, I have come to play rock'n'roll for the East-Berliners, in the hope that one day all barriers will be torn down." (He had been advised not to use the word `walls.’) He wrote the song for the multi-artist Human Right Now! Tour to benefit Amnesty International.

And 37 years later, the song remains quite relevant.

Here’s the opening verse:

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.