Springsteen Announces a Dallas Date. It's About Time We Understand His Legacy.

You really don't need anyone to tell you why you should do your darned best to see Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band live in concert before you or they die. If you do need to be told, though, just keep reading after the link to buy tickets to his next show at the American Airlines Center.

The Boss and his band just announced their new world tour for 2023, because when you carry the heavy boulder of rock prowess that Springsteen and his crew tote out every show, you need at least a year off.

Dallas will be the fifth stop on the tour on Feb. 10, 2023, at the AAC and tickets will go on sale (and probably go really damn fast) online at 10 a.m. Friday, July 22, through Ticketmaster.

It's hard to know where to start with Springsteen's influence because his musical contributions are just the surface. He and his band have tentacles that reach pretty much every corner of pop culture. The movies that used Springsteen's original songs and commissioned soundtracks such as Jerry Maguire, Dead Man Walking and Philadelphia (for which he won an Oscar for Best Original Song), would not have been as powerful or affecting as they are without his voice and presence carrying their messages of peace, acceptance, repentance and sorrow.

He also made movie cameos cool long before Stan Lee built a sixth career out of them in flicks such as High Fidelity. Bruce appeared as the overactive, pop music driven conscience of Rob Gordon  — played by John Cusack — who strums out a few chords from "The River" while Rob tries to come up with reasons to visit five of his exes, because the memory of these relationships keep him stuck in the past instead of moving forward in the present. You'd have to be dead to have never heard one of Springsteen's songs. They are sewn into America's aural landscape in ways that self-appointed uber patriots like Lee Greenwood and Ted Nugent try so hard to wedge themselves into.

Some of Springsteen's earliest hits such as "Born to Run," "Born in the USA," "Racing in the Street" and "Thunder Road" celebrate common people who are the true fuel of a nation's pride and soul as they make heartbreaking, never-ending, uncredited sacrifices and take on physical and emotional scars so others can stand on their shoulders and proclaim their own greatness. And the beauty is that no matter how sad the imagery gets, there's always a twinge of hope hiding behind it if you know how to look for it.

Plus, it's always hilarious to hear some crackpot zealot running for Congress or (God forbid) president play "Born in the USA" because their PR team can't think far enough past the title to realize the song is actually about the people they put down to appeal to their bases' worst instincts and phobias. It started not long after the song hit the charts in 1984 when one of President Ronald Reagan's people asked New Jersey's most famous son if they could use it for his re-election campaign, which undoubtedly pushed Springsteen's personal and musical opinions even further to the left.

Nowadays, some people just play it because it sounds patriotic, even though it's really about something much deeper and darker. That just gives an already awesome song even more value as schadenfreude entertainment during a depressing election cycle. It's the political equivalent of watching your mom sing "Baby Got Back" on karaoke night.

The song is always played by candidates to celebrate and demonstrate their love and duty to America. It starts with the downtrodden tale of an average citizen who's "Born down in a dead man's town/The first kick I took was when I hit the ground/You end up like a dog that's been beat too much/'Til you spend half your life coverin' up." Then it goes into "Boooooorn in the USA!" because that's the only part of the song the political media machine can remember.

Of course, this has not stopped. It's happened pretty much every election cycle up to former President Donald Trump, who played it at a campaign rally, and his fans sang the song outside Trump's hospital room at Walter Reed Medical Center when he came down with COVID.

It's even more deliciously sad since Trump and his allies built his political career questioning the place of birth of the man who served before him. It's like he and his followers were using the song to compete with each other to see who could be more ironic.

Springsteen and the E Street Band's music makes movies better, celebrates the people who do all the work but get none of the credit and makes pompous windbags running for president look just a little bit dumber at just the right time. Makes you proud that you and they were born in the USA, doesn't it?