Bruce Springsteen makes rare commercial appearance in Super Bowl ad to call for unity

Bruce Springsteen urged Americans watching the Super Bowl Sunday night to find "The Middle" ground as the 71-year-old singer made a rare commercial appearance during Jeep's new two-minute ad.

"All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle," Springsteen says. "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. Now fear has never been the best of who we are, 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."

According to The New York Times, this ad marks Springsteen's first-ever appearance in a commercial. "I wasn't aware of the one thing that all of America was totally aware of, which is that Bruce Springsteen doesn't do commercials," Olivier François, chief marketing officer for Jeep parent company Stellantis, told The Times. But Springsteen did this one.

The "Thunder Road" musician previously spoke out against Donald Trump, a figure who helped stoke political division during his four-year presidency. Springsteen then participated in the inauguration festivities for incoming president Joe Biden.

"We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground," Springsteen says in the ad. "So we can get there. We can make it to the mountaintop, through the desert… and we will cross this divide. Our light has always found its way through the darkness. And there's hope on the road… up ahead."

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