Bruce Springsteen reacted to Tuesday’s presidential election results in the best way he knows how: by singing a song about freedom, hope, love and loss. “This is a fighting prayer for my country,” Springsteen told the crowd at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto as he and the E Street Band launched into the 2007 song “Long Walk Home” from 2007’s Magic album.
With that, the band tore into the mid-tempo rocker whose lyrics felt especially timely in light of Springsteen’s vocal, emphatic support of Vice President Kamala Harris’ losing campaign against former and now future President Donald Trump. “Last night I stood at your doorstep/ Trying to figure out what went wrong,” he sang on the song with the poignant refrain: “It’s gonna be a long walk home/ Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me/ Gonna be a long walk home.”
Though he didn’t comment further on the relevance of the song’s themes, their plainspoken poetry did the talking for him. “My father said ‘Son, we’re lucky in this town/ It’s a beautiful place to be born/ It just wraps its arms around you/ Nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone,’” he sang, followed by another verse layered with Springsteen’s signature dream of a better tomorrow and faith in the resilience of the American spirit: “Your flag flyin’ over the courthouse/ Means certain things are set in stone/ Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”
Springsteen had been all-in for Harris, throwing his weight behind the 11th-hour candidacy by filming the moving “Hope and Dreams” campaign video in which he said, “This election is about a group of folks who want to fundamentally undermine our American way of life. Donald Trump does not understand this country, its history, or what it means to be deeply American. I want a president who reveres the Constitution, who wants to protect and guide our great democracy, who believes in the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, who will fight for women’s rights and a woman’s right to choose, and who wants to create a middle class economy that serves all our citizens.”
The comments came from an Oct. 28 Harris rally where Springsteen shared the stage with John Legend and former President Barack Obama. That appearance in Philadelphia came just days after The Boss joined a Harris rally in Georgia, where he told supporters that she was “running to be the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant.”
Springsteen was one of dozens of musicians, actors and other artists who threw in with the Harris campaign’s attempt to stop twice impeached Trump from being just the second man to serve non-consecutive White House terms, as well as the first convicted felon to ascend to the nation’s highest office.
Watch a fan video of the performance here.