While some artists choose to carefully sidestep political allegiances so as not to offend, Bruce Springsteen’s antagonism towards Donald Trump has long been known: now the rock star – who formerly labelled the US president “a moron”, and described his travel ban as “fundamentally un-American” – has put his political frustrations into song.
A collaboration between Springsteen and Houserockers frontman Joe Grushecky, an anti-Trump protest song called That’s What Makes Us Great is available to purchase from Grushecky’s website, and premiered earlier this week on SiriusXM.
The lyrics take aim at elements of the Trump administration and also the president’s personality, with Springsteen singing: “Don’t tell me a lie / And sell it as a fact / I’ve been down that road before / And I ain’t going back,” and “Don’t you brag to me / That you never read a book / I never put my faith / In a con man and his crooks.”
“I had this song, and Bruce and I had been talking,” Grushecky told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I sent it to him and he liked it. I said, ‘What do you think about singing on it?’ He gave it the Bruce treatment.”
Aside from his scathing words at gigs, Springsteen’s anti-Trump crusade included a performance at a Hillary Clinton rally. In 2016, a month before the election results were revealed, Springsteen spoke about Trump’s masculinity and why his confidence is a “facade” – a leadership style propelled by “anxiety, fragility and insecurity”.
“It’s such a thin costume that for me it doesn’t hold for a moment,” he said. “He’s really quite an embarrassment if you’re from the US. It’s simply the most rigid and thinnest veil of masculinity over a mess.”
