I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. On Saturday morning in Minneapolis,

Alex Pretti died at the hands of federal agents. That same day, Bruce Springsteen sat down in

Coltsneck, New Jersey, and wrote a new song called Streets of Minneapolis. The next day,

during a huge snowstorm, he recorded that song with his longtime producer Ron

Aniello. The two of them played all the instruments themselves, but they got the East Street

choir, Bruce's backup singers from his tour, to come in during the snowstorm and record

backup vocals. And that included Paddy Scalfa, who was of course on hand, and they managed to get

the song up and released to the world on Wednesday.

Oh, Minneapolis, I hear your voice singing through the bloodied mist.

By Friday, Bruce was on stage in Minneapolis, singing that song and a couple others with

Tom Morella. It's a very, very direct protest song, and it wasn't the

only protest song about the events in Minneapolis. There's also actually a really good song

by No FX, who came out of retirement to release this song, and Billy Bragg put out a song,

and there's probably more to come. And there is a long history, a surprisingly long

history of songs written and released or played live right after the event that they're

written about, super timely protest songs. So we're going to talk about these new songs about

Minneapolis and about the history of the

sort of rapid response songs.

And to do so, I have with me, Andy Green.

Hey, Andy.

Hey, Brian, how you don't?

Well, it's quite a week.

...