There is the singer who, for five decades, has taken his audience on a journey − from feverish rock anthems to harmonica ballads − “on the streets of a runaway American dream.” And there is the president who, through decrees and diatribes, has promised his voters to “make America great again.” Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump, at 75 and 78 years old respectively, represent two contrasting visions of America that are now clashing – fiercely.
During a European tour that brought him to France from May 24 to 31, the Born in the USA singer took aim at Trump, accusing him, as he said on May 24 in Lille, of being “corrupt and incompetent.” In response, the Mar-a-Lago resident lashed back, calling him a “jerk” and a “dried out prune.” Springsteen, who grew up in a working-class New Jersey family, seems to particularly irk the current president and New York-born “son of,” likely because the singer conveys the pain and nostalgia that Trump exploits so relentlessly: one of small towns living in the shadow of declining factories.
Searching through Le Monde‘s archives is like traveling upriver. Springsteen’s role as a disillusioned voice of America emerged as early as this newspaper’s first article on the singer − published on November 22, 1975 − on the occasion of the release of his third album, Born to Run, which brought him worldwide fame. Claude Fléouter was captivated by the artist – “Bruce Springsteen seems to have come straight from [Times Square]” – and even more by his music, which he described as being “Thrown, shouted and howled out with fury and sensuality, [with poetic rush],” and as full of “passions and fantasies.” To Fléouter, the album captured “the atmosphere of a New York street.”
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