Bruce Springsteen Appears In 2021 Super Bowl Ad, Pleads For Unity

FREEHOLD, NJ - While a notable list of celebrities made appearances in various commercials for Super Bowl LV, New Jersey rock legend Bruce Springsteen's cameo served among the more political of the bunch. In a new commercial for Jeep dubbed “The Middle" which aired during the Feb. 7 event, Springsteen discusses his “search of common ground” before a title card bears the message: “To the ReUnited States of America.”

During the two-minute film, the Colts Neck resident travels in a Jeep CJ-5 to the U.S. Center Chapel in Kansas, which is located at the literal center of the continental United States.

“There’s a chapel in Kansas standing on the exact center of the lower 48,” Springsteen narrates. “It never closes. All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle. It’s no secret: the middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue, between servant and citizen, between our freedom and our fear.”

The Boss’ manager Jon Landau told the Asbury Park Press that Springsteen was heavily involved in the production, providing “extensive rewrites” on the original treatment and was “happy with every word of the final script … Bruce was intimately involved with every detail and personally approved every single shot.”

“Now fear has never been the best of who we are,” Springsteen continues in the ad. “And as for freedom, it’s not the property of just the fortunate few. It belongs to us all. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from, it’s what connects us, and we need that connection. We need the middle. We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground. So we can get there. We can make it to the mountaintop, through the desert, and we will cross this divide.”

The 71-year-old Freehold native has hardly shied away from talking politics in the past. During a 2020 radio broadcast on SiriusXM, Springsteen called Trump “the man sitting behind the resolute desk” and asked the president to “Put on a f--king mask.” Later that year, he told Australia's Daily Telegraph that he would be on the next plane to the land down under if former president Donald Trump won reelection in November.

Springsteen also backed then-presidential nominee Joe Biden at the 2020 Democratic National Convention with a new video for his 2002 song "The Rising." He narrated Biden's "Hometown" presidential ad campaign and performed at both former president Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration and President Biden’s inauguration ceremony concert in January.

You can watch Springsteen in “The Middle” here.