Hot off his unseating of Adele as chart-dominator, Bruce Springsteen teamed with Tom Morello, Arcade Fire, the Low Anthem, and more at South by Southwest (what, Jay-Z couldn’t swing by?) to perform “This Land Is Your Land.†The performance came on the same day The Boss delivered SXSW’s keynote speech, summarized thusly by NPR: “Springsteen made corny jokes, played a little music on an acoustic guitar and showed remarkable humility, saying he thought of himself as ‘an average guy with a slightly above average gift.’ People were crying in their seats, and I’ll bet every audience member walked away inking her own favorite moment into her memory.†Springsteen was open-minded and inclusive of many musical styles in his speech (he name-checked both Kiss and Public Enemy numerous times) but professed bafflement at one sub-genre, as any man wont to riff on a Woody Guthrie song for seven-minutes should: “What I want to know is, what the fuck is Nintendo-core?â€
