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Tim Walz, Democratic candidate for vice president and Bruce Springsteen fan

Bedatri D. Choudhury, The Philadelphia Inquirer on

Published in Entertainment News

“He’s wearing a Springsteen tour shirt. Is Tim Walz perfect?” X user Daniel Pereira asked on the social media site, almost reading our collective minds on Tuesday, shortly after Kamala Harris named the Minnesota governor as her running mate.

The video Pereira refers to, which has gained social media prominence since the announcement, shows Walz at the 2023 Minnesota state fair with his daughter, Hope. “Every year, as a family, we do something old and something new,” he says wearing a navy blue T-shirt with the word Springsteen on it. Later when the camera zooms out on the father-daughter duo yelling at the slingshot ride (their “something new” that year), we see the Boss’ face in black and white.

Back in March 2023, as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were headed to play at St. Paul, Minnesota’s Xcel Energy Center, Walz declared March 5 to be Springsteen Day in the state.

“Springsteen’s concert is a celebration of the best of Minnesota, with its proud history, diverse communities, and rich cultural heritage ... Springsteen’s music is a source of inspiration for many people in Minnesota, reminding us of the values that we hold dear, including kindness, compassion, and fairness,” part of the proclamation read.

On June 4 this year, Springsteen’s seventh studio album, "Born in the U.S.A.," turned 40. Incidentally, in 1984, Springsteen kicked off the first leg of his “Born in the USA” tour with a three-night run at the St. Paul Civic Center, now called the Xcel Energy Center. It was inside the Civic Center that Brian DePalma filmed the “Dancing in the Dark” video with a then 20-year-old Courteney Cox playing a fan Springsteen pulls onto the stage. The tour went on to mount 156 shows.

 

In 2022, as Springsteen faced backlash from fans for the Ticketmaster price gouging that made tour ticket prices go for as much as $5,000 a pop, Walz took to X (then called Twitter) to crowdsource a ticket. “Anyone manage to get an extra Bruce Springsteen ticket today? Asking for a friend,” he tweeted.

While there are several important political commonalities between Harris and Walz, a good taste in music is definitely one of them. We don’t quite know what VP Harris’ take on Springsteen is, but the Harris-Walz ticket is definitely a couple of BeyHivers. Harris is using “Freedom” from the Beyoncé’s 2016 Lemonade as her campaign theme song and Walz declared July 20 as Beyoncé Day in Minnesota.

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©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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