Pink Cadillac (song) release "Art or Bust" video - comprising footage from the two De Tour concerts at the University of Minnesota - included "Pink Cadillac" as the opening number. Aretha Franklin is sometimes mis-credited as a singer of "Pink Cadillac" as the imagery occurs in her 1985 comeback hit "Freeway of Love" with the same metaphoric sense as in the Springsteen original, the lyric being: "We're going riding on the freeway of love in my pink Cadillac". "Pink Cadillac" has long been a staple of Melissa Etheridge's live repertoire; at a 2 October 1996 Milwaukee concert by Etheridge, Bruce Springsteen joined her
Bruce Springsteen was advocating for the rights of the common working-class man. The song was widely misinterpreted as jingoistic, and in connection with the 1984 presidential campaign became the subject of considerable folklore. In 1984, conservative columnist George Will attended a Springsteen concert and then wrote a column praising Springsteen's work ethic. Six days after the column was printed, in a campaign rally in Hammonton, New Jersey, Reagan said, "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire—New Jersey's own, Bruce Springsteen." Two