November 3, 2024
(UPDATE: Make that a TRIPLE-shot! Thom Zimny has confirmed with us via email that he directed the "Hopes and Dreams" and "An American Tyrant" videos, and there's an additional November 1 social-media-posted "Dancing in the Dark"/"I'll see you on higher ground!" video, featuring Pam Springsteen's direction and photography, that we've since added below.)
We're now just around the corner to Election Day 2024 here in the U.S., and within the past few days Bruce Springsteen has shared online two more official videos supporting the Harris-Walz campaign for the U.S. Presidency and Vice-Presidency. Both videos utilize footage of Springsteen speaking onstage during his appearance and performance at the October 28 Harris-Walz campaign rally in Philadelphia, PA. The more recently released video, entitled "Hopes and Dreams," combines edited multi-camera footage of Springsteen's onstage speech with footage of Harris and Walz reaching out to supporters and potential voters on the campaign trail, as part of the officially released studio version of "Land of Hope and Dreams" from Wrecking Ball effectively plays over it all. Clocking in at exactly one minute, it's the official Springsteen endorsement video that plays most like a traditional electoral-campaign television ad.
"Hopes and Dreams" was preceded two days earlier by "An American Tyrant," a spoken-word-only video clip which consists of an unedited, single-camera presentation of Bruce's entire just-under-two-minutes onstage speech preceding his October 28 solo-acoustic performance of "Land of Hope and Dreams." The campaign-rally footage used in both videos differs from the video feed provided by and to various news outlets that covered the rally live and/or in subsequent reports. Given the excellent quality of this footage, it's likely that it was shot by Springsteen's own camp, possibly involving his longtime film/video collaborator and archivist Thom Zimny, who directed Bruce's initial Harris-Walz endorsement video, which was released on October 3. (UPDATE: Zimny has confirmed with us via email that he directed the "Hopes and Dreams" and "An American Tyrant" videos, and there's an additional November 1 social-media-posted "Dancing in the Dark"/"I'll see you on higher ground!" video, featuring Pam Springsteen's direction and photography, that we've since added below.)
Click below to watch both "Hopes and Dreams," released on November 1, and "An American Tyrant," released on October 30, both directed by Thom Zimny, and newly added... the November 1 social-media-posted "Dancing in the Dark"/"I'll see you on higher ground!" video, featuring Pam Springsteen's direction and photography: