Bruce Springsteen is back at San Siro. For the ninth time in his storied career, he’s filled the stadium to the rafters. Playing nearly three hours of music without a single break, the E Street Band was tight as ever, and 75-year-old Bruce still carried the weight of the stage like it’s 1975.
The setlist was as familiar as an old leather jacket: Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark, Because the Night, Wrecking Ball, The Rising, and Badlands all got their due. But what’s changed isn’t the songs—it’s the world around them. And Bruce knows it.
This leg of the tour isn’t just about the music. Every night, the Boss grabs the mic and speaks—and what he’s saying hits hard. “My America,” he told the Milan crowd, “is in the hands of a corrupt and incompetent government. They’re silencing dissent, dismantling civil rights, and turning power against their own people.” He didn’t drop Trump’s name, but the reference is clear enough without it. If you’ve followed Springsteen over the years, you know who and what he’s calling out: Republican leadership, anti-immigration laws, systemic inequality.
It’s not new territory for him. Back in 1984, he clapped back when Reagan tried to hijack Born in the U.S.A. for his campaign—a brutal misread of a song about a Vietnam vet returning home to find no job, no support, and no future. He didn’t flinch in 2024 either, answering Trump’s attacks without backing down an inch. “If you came here just for the music and don’t want to think,” he told another crowd, “you’re at the wrong concert.”
Bruce’s message doesn’t always live inside the lyrics. Sometimes he steps out from behind the guitar to say it plainly. At San Siro, he introduced My City of Ruins, Land of Hope and Dreams, and House of a Thousand Guitars with raw political monologues about creeping authoritarianism in the U.S., slashed education budgets, and detained migrants held without trial or recourse.
He closed the show with the anthems that have defined his encores for decades: Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark, Twist and Shout. After three relentless hours, the E Street Band remains a powerhouse. Bruce doesn’t have anything left to prove, and yet, night after night, he keeps proving it anyway.
Offstage, he’s not slowing down either. His new box set, Tracks II: The Lost Albums, is more than just a vault-clearing exercise. These aren’t scraps or demos—they’re full, finished albums that were shelved for reasons of timing or artistic direction. There’s country, soul, synth-pop, even a record shaped by West Coast hip-hop. And then there’s LA Garage Sessions ’83—raw, unpolished, somewhere between Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A..
