Last night, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band opened up their first of five farewell-to–Giants Stadium shows with a brand-new track that the Boss wrote specifically for the occasion. The song, “Wrecking Ball,” is significantly more lively and energetic than anything on his most recent LP, Working On a Dream, and seems to signal to this longtime Springsteen fan that Bruce has been spending a lot of time of late listening to the Gaslight Anthem’s terrific new album. As expected, the crowd erupted each time Springsteen’s lyrics directly referenced the Garden State, whether it was the “Rosalita”-inspired line that opens the song (“I was raised out of steel here in the swamps of Jersey”) to the goose-bump-inducing stanza “My home is here at the Meadowlands / Where mosquitos grow as big as airplanes / Here where the blood is spilled, the arena is filled / And Giants play the game.” We had initially been reluctant to shell out the big bucks it requires to see this final home stand by the Boss, but after hearing this song, we’re definitely going to be spending the next few hours scouring Craigslist for bargain seats.
Bruce Springsteen performs his new song Wrecking Ball at Giants Stadium [Star-Ledger]
