The Tony Awards will honor Bruce Springsteen with a special award when the ceremony returns this June. The iconic singer-songwriter will receive the accolade in recognition of Springsteen on Broadway, a massively popular one-man show that has seen him perform over 100 concert at New York City’ Walter Kerr Theater.
Launched in August of 2017, Springsteen on Broadway was an instant success. Since then, the production’s run has been extended on multiple occasions due to high demand. Tickets to every performance have sold out, and there’s no reason to assume every subsequent show will go the same way. By the time the run ends in December (if it really does end then), Springsteen will have performed 236 gigs at the 975-seat Broadway theater.
“My idea was really just to present the work that I’ve done for the past 40 years or so and let it speak for itself,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone last year. “I didn’t feel like I needed to get on a soapbox or be real ideological about it. I wanted the night to play very naturally, and be broad enough to be about all the things I’ve written about over the years. And in that way, in the contrast, it would comment.”
Springsteen is one of two artists who will receive a special award at this year’s Tony’s—the other being actor, writer, and director John Leguizamo. He’s also not the only musical star who will be on hand at the ceremony, as John Legend, Steven Tyler, T.I, The Flaming Lips, Cyndi Lauper, Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, and many others have all been nominated for their work on the SpongeBob SquarePants musical.
The special Tony Award will mark the latest major award for Springsteen, who has already earned himself 20 Grammys as well as an honor for Best Original Song at the 194 Academy Awards (for “Streets of Philadelphia” from the film Philadelphia).
The 72nd annual Tony Awards will take air at 8pm ET on June 10th via CBS. The ceremony will take place at Radio City Music Hall and will be hosted by Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles.
In related news, Springsteen’s new vinyl box set, The Album Collection Vol. 2, is due out on May 18th.
