What do Bruce Springsteen and Tori Amos have in common?
Quite a bit, actually:
- They’re both singer/songwriters with vast catalogs that span decades.
- They’re both known for their wildly unpredictable setlists and fervent fan bases.
- They both have a encyclopedic appreciation of rock and are known for their inspired cover interpretations
- They each have a great song entitled “Drive All Night.”
- They both have borderline obsessive fans who analyze virtually every lyric they ever wrote.
And as it turns out, all of the above serve as context for explaining why this Cover Me installment is very different from the rest of this series.
Efrain and David, the hosts of the “Drive All Night: The Songs of Tori Amos” podcast, recently invited me to be a guest on their show during a two-hour(!) episode devoted entirely to Tori’s cover of Bruce’s “I’m on Fire.”
You read that right: a two-hour podcast devoted to a Tori Amos cover of a Bruce Springsteen song. How could I pass that up?
Well, I couldn’t, of course. My conversation with Efraim is only one segment of wide-ranging episode, but I had a blast getting introduced to Tori Amos super-fandom!
So instead of my usual commentary here, If you’ve got 110 minutes or so, take a listen to Efrain and David discovering and analyzing both Bruce’s and Tori’s versions of “I’m on Fire,” along with my comparative thoughts, and let me know what you think.
Efrain and David feel like kindred spirits to me: they’re deep into their mission to profile every song that Tori Amos has ever recorded, including the covers, and boy are they thorough. Each episode features a line-by-line analysis, notable covers, great live performances, and more. When they tackle Tori covering another artist, they invite a “superfan” (their word, not mine) of the original artist to provide comparative context and commentary.
Efrain and I had a great conversation; it was fascinating to talk to someone so interested to learn all about Bruce but who was a relatively blank Springsteen slate. For my part, I learned a lot about what Bruce and Tori fans have in common, discovered some great covers of “I’m on Fire” that I hadn’t known about, and heard some outstanding Tori Amos live performances of Bruce’s music that flat-out floored me (including a cover of “Growin’ Up” that’s never been released but which you can hear during the show).
So thanks again, Efrain and David, for a great conversation, for an introduction to the Toriverse, and for adding a handful of great covers to my “to-blog” list!
