I didn’t hear much when I first listened to the title track to Bruce Springsteen’s latest CD, "Working on a Dream." It was catchy and heartfelt, but it sounded like any one of a number of Springsteen’s odes to hard work, the kind where listener and protagonist are one and the same, and you end up rooting for each other in a sort of cosmic buddy system. "Dream," then, initially conjured a scenario of a '69 Chevy being overhauled in a garage by a guy whose biggest goal is to get 'er ready to go racing in the streets.

But when Springsteen and the E Street Band performed it at the Xcel Center last week, I heard it in an altogether different light: as Springsteen’s version of John Lennon’s "Imagine."

Like  that 1971 anthem, "Dream" was written at a time of great tumult in America. And while words such as "hope" and "dream" are often rendered limp at the moment by millions of disgruntled unemployed workers and "utopia"-wary conservative commentators, it says here that the message of "Working on a Dream" is a necessary one: Even though we ain’t got money, there’s work to be done; work that feeds our collective soul that has nothing to do with money or hard times, and which, in fact, can give hard times meaning.

Sure, it can be heard as a personal paean for turning hobbies into cash cows or "Flash of Genius"-inspired ingenuity. But more than anything, I hear it these days as an "Imagine"-like call for a better world -- a dream that lies with children, new ideas, and hope for the future.

Now if we could just hear it on the radio.