Bruce Springsteen Stands Against Government Censorship on ‘Kimmel’

Bruce Springsteen stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! Thursday night to offer some much-needed words of hope — and also talk about the one time he tried doing karaoke.

Near the end of the interview — which was conducted alongside Bruce biopic star Jeremy Allen White — Kimmel asked Springsteen if he would mind sharing a few thoughts about the state of the country and the world. Springsteen obliged, with a statement that was at once concise and powerful.

“Fifty years, I’ve been kind of a musical ambassador for America around the world,” he said. “I have this song, ‘Land of Hope and Dreams,’ which is kind of a prayer to the country, and we play it every night. I know for a fact that that’s how many people around the world still see our country. Not as a land of fear, not as a divisiveness, not of government censorship, not of hatred. And I basically believe that that’s an America that’s worth fighting for.”

The rest of the interview, of course, was not as heavy. Springsteen and White largely chatted about Deliver Me From Nowhere; Springsteen recalled the story of how he stole the title for “Born in the U.S.A.” from a script sent to him by the filmmaker Paul Schrader; and he spoke about the upcoming Nebraska ’82 box set, which will contain the long-fabled electric version of the album recorded by the E-Street Band.

Amidst all that, Springsteen also shared another great story: About the first and only time he ever did karaoke. “I was in London in a little bar, they were doing karaoke, and I said, ‘I’m gonna get up and do some fucking karaoke!’” Springsteen recalled with a grin. 

For his song, he chose the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” and — being that he is Bruce Springsteen — he figured he’d get up on stage, “sing a few notes,” and the bar would “go wild.” Instead, he quipped, “I got up there, I started singing, and they thought I was just another asshole who had gotten up on stage and was trying to do karaoke! It was really disappointing, I’ve never done it again.”