Episode 10 | I’m On Fire

Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet, the sexy song that everybody covers and neither of us wants to sing.

I’m On Fire closes side one with three notes on a synthesizer, some brushes on a snare, a palm-muted guitar and those ghostly hoo-hoos. Two minutes and change. It sounds like fall, it sounds a little haunted, it sounds like it wandered over from Nebraska, and it went to number one in the Netherlands, where for three weeks in 1985 Bruce was basically the Beatles.

We talk about why the most stripped-down song on an arena-rock record is the one that gets covered by everybody from Johnny Cash to Bats for Lashes, why Rob only likes it on vinyl, and what the last two lines do that the first one doesn’t. We also talk about the first verse, but only because we have to. We don’t make the rules.

How many freight trains do you give this song? Leave your rating in the episode comments at alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com.

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Chapters

02:24 Basic Facts

11:10 The Music

17:54 The Lyrics

29:15 The Ratings

33:38 Next time: No Surrender, and how to find us

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