The track written over the weekend and recorded on Tuesday (Jan. 27) is one of the singer’s most political anthems to date and a response to killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.
Bruce Springsteen released one of the most politically charged tracks of his career on Wednesday (Jan. 28) with the surprise drop of the smoldering protest song “Streets of Minneapolis.” In a statement, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer said the song was written on Saturday (Jan. 24) and recorded on Tuesday (Jan. 27) in response to “the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis.”
In the tradition of one of his icons, folk legend Woody Guthrie, the song’s lyrics plainly and powerfully tell the story of the pitched battles being fought on the streets of the city as citizens stand up and push back on the sometimes violent immigration raids being carried out by the Trump administration. Specifically, he pays tribute to the violent actions by border and ICE agents that so far this month have resulted in the killings of two American citizens: 37-year-old mother of three Renée Good and 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti.
Springsteen dedicated the song to the people of Minneapolis, as well as “our innocent immigrant neighbors,” and to the memories of Good and Pretti.
The Nebraska-like urgent rocker opens with just Springsteen and spare instrumentation as he seethes, “Through the winter’s ice and cold/ Down Nicollet Avenue/ A city aflame fought fire and ice/ ‘Neath an occupier’s boots/ King Trump’s private army from the DHS/ Guns belted to their coats/ Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law/ Or so their story goes.”
The song, which is a callback to Springsteen’s Oscar and Grammy-winning 1994 soundtrack anthem “Streets of Philadelphia” from director Jonathan Demme’s 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia, bursts into a full band roar by the second verse. Springsteen praises the brave push-back from residents of Minneapolis against the masked ICE and other border patrol enlistees who have descended on the city by the thousands this month to carry out Trump’s immigration agenda.
“Against smoke and rubber bullets/ By the dawn’s early light/ Citizens stood for justice/ Their voices ringing through the night,” he sings over chiming guitars and a steady drum beat. “And there were bloody footprints/ Where mercy should have stood/ And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets/ Alex Pretti and Renee Good.”
Springsteen joins a rising chorus of American citizens, a handful of Republican legislators and fellow artists including Billie Eilish and Finneas, Dave Matthews, Moby, Olivia Rodrigo, the Chicks as well as a raft of Hollywood stars decrying the aggressive tactics employed by Trump’s immigration enforcers. They’ve spoken out after the Jan. 7 killing of Good, who was shot to death by ICE agent Jonathan Ross amid Trump administration claims that she “weaponized” her car against Ross, despite video of the incident that appears to show her turning her car away from him and attempting to leave the scene of an ICE enforcement action.
Similarly, after Trump and several members of his administration rushed to label Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and “assassin” in the hours after his killing by an unidentified U.S. Border Patrol agent on Friday (Jan. 24), multiple video angles of his slaying appear to show him attempting to help a woman who had been thrown violently to the ground by agents amid a protest against their actions. Pretti, a licensed gun owner who video appeared to show had his holstered gun taken away from him just seconds into the confrontation, was shot 10 times while laying prone and pinned to the ground by half a dozen masked officers.
Springsteen’s plainspoken lyrics call out the people of Minneapolis, whose voices he says he hears “through the bloody mist,” vowing to take a stand “for this land/ And the stranger in our midst” and remember the names of those who died on their city’s streets.
The song is also a call-back to one of the Boss’ most intense protest anthems, 2001’s “American Skin (41 Shots),” his passionate response to the 1999 NYPD killing of unarmed Amadou Diallo. Along with the serially misunderstood anti-Vietnam War anthem”Born in the U.S.A.” and his John Steinbeck-inspired paean to the disenfranchised and trampled upon, “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” Springsteen’s latest is in keeping with his tradition of powerfully responding to the tenor of the times. And in keeping with his disdain for former reality TV star Trump, during the first Trump administration, he released “That’s What Makes Us Great,” a gritty song that spun the president’s “Make America Great Again” slogan in defense of immigrants who come to America in search of a dream and freedom.
“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,” Springsteen sings on the new song of Pretti, who was a nurse on an intensive care unit at the Department of Veterans Affair
“Their claim was self defense, sir/ Just don’t believe your eyes,” he continues. “It’s our blood and bones/ And these whistles and phones/ Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies,” the latter a call out to White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — who was the one who referred to Pretti as an “assassin” — and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who also issued what appear to be misleading and inflammatory statements in the moments after the killing claiming that Pretti intended to “massacre” agents.
The song ends with Springsteen lamenting the trampling of rights by officers eager to question or deport anyone with Black or brown skin, while amplifying the frequently shouted cries of “ICE out now” heard at protests around the nation over the past few months.
“Here in our home they killed and roamed/ In the winter of ’26/ We’ll take our stand for this land/ And the stranger in our midst/ We’ll remember the names of those who died/ On the streets of Minneapolis,” he sings in the final, urgent refrain.
Listen to “Streets of Minneapolis” below.
