Bruce Springsteen Apologized To Australia With A Cover Song
Every koala bear in Australia spit out the eucalyptus leaves that they were contentedly chewing on to side-eye America this week. This was due to our despot-in-chief exhibiting his usual diplomatic finesse in a phone call with Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull.
President Donald Trump reportedly abruptly ended the call with pretty much a “g’day, bitch!” after Malcolm had the audacity to ask if the US was going to honor an agreement that had already been made by the Obama administration to accept refugees. He’s also said to have told Malcolm that their exchange was “the worst call by far” he had taken that day.
Australia was is one of the US’ staunchest allies, so this was another sterling moment in President number 45’s repping of us to the rest of the world.
American poet Bruce Springsteen, like many of us, was embarrassed by Trump’s alleged behavior and expressed his regrets during a concert in Melbourne, Australia on Thursday. Billboard reports that he covered an obscure 1962 song called “Don’t Hang Up” (by a band called The Orions) as way of imploring the Aussies not to judge us by you-know-who.
In a YouTube video of the show’s opening moments, Springsteen, alone on the stage with an acoustic guitar, addresses the crowd by saying, “we stand before you embarrassed Americans tonight. This was a song from 1965 by the Orions we gonna use it to send a letter back home.” The rock icon then yelled “we come from a land of immigrants! This is an immigrant song” as the full E Street Band ripped into “American Land” from 2006’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.
The Boss’ bandmate Steven Van Zandt (you might know him better as Silvio from The Sopranos) also expressed his regrets over Twitter.
Australia is, was, and always will be one of the USA's best friends and closest allies. Apologies for today's temporary embarrassment.
— Stevie Van Zandt (@StevieVanZandt) February 2, 2017
You can watch part of Bruce’s performance below. Everybody likes Bruce across the aisle and back. Can’t we just have him handle all of our international diplomacy correspondence from now on?
He's on it! @springsteen starts first Melbourne show "sending a message home" covering Don't Hang Up for Trump v Turnbull pic.twitter.com/dV38VBXFaQ
— cameron adams (@cameron_adams) February 2, 2017
Pic: WENN