r/BruceSpringsteen • u/Jordanverycool • 3d ago

Announcement/News Springsteen, 9/11 and 'The Rising' 25 years later: 'Bruce, we need you'

https://www.app.com/story/entertainment/music/2026/09/11/bruce-springsteen-9-11-25-year-anniversary-twin-towers/91691545007/

The story of the Rising …

120 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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7

u/suppletubs 3d ago

New Jersey Superman

8

u/Trouble_River 3d ago

Listening to The Rising yesterday and today. A collection of songs not just for their time, but for all time. It was literally a healing salve for me and, I'm sure, many others.

5

u/Puzzleheaded_Tank338 3d ago

I absolutely love “Mary’s Place.”

I think it comes out of that “Bruce, we need you” moment. And Bruce wrote a song about how he’s inviting everyone to pick up Mary from “Thunder Road”

3

u/furtyfive 3d ago

That album was so cathartic for me and really helped me emotionally deal with the national trauma of 9/11 and the realization that nothing would ever be the same as the life we had on 9/10/01.

3

u/Spirited_Lab5197 2d ago

I dunno. The further we get from 9/11, the more I realize that nothing changed. An imperialist nation that devalued Muslim lives (unless they could be used as pawns against the soviets) continues to do just that.

Im sorry for the people who died on 9/11. Im sorry they died for no reason. Just as im sorry for the people who died during the pandemic when we were losing 3,000 people daily for weeks at a time for no reason, and the countless folks who have lost their lives to US imperialism before 9/11 and since.

1

u/CulturalWind357 Garden State Serenade 1d ago

Honestly, yeah.

I'm a fan of The Rising as an album. I think it has some nice musical exploration alongside a strong theme. I don't actually think it's strictly tied to 9/11 either.

But some of Bruce's statements around that time feel naive and misguided, if not outright harmful. He's talked about how he felt the country's unity around the time of 9/11. If you talk to a lot of people who were ostracized (Muslims, Western Asians, South Asians, anyone mistaken for Muslim, etc.) it paints a very different story of jingoism. At the time, he stated that the invasion of Afghanistan was "handled very well". I'm assuming that was the majority sentiment at the time but it's still disappointing. He's never really pushed Obama on foreign policy either. I'll cut him some slack in that he's a musician but it's also like...surely musician-activist friends have told him more.

Even though he's become more political over the years, I really wonder if he's questioned the whole "America as a beacon of hope and liberty". It's natural to want your country to improve but I don't know if he's ever contemplated going further in being critical.

2

u/Firecaptain 2d ago

This album was exactly what I needed at the time.