Twin sisters Ellie and Louise Macnamara are lifelong Bruce Springsteen fans, and it shows.
They’ve been singing together in their native Ireland as Heathers (yes, that’s an homage to the film) since they were seventeen. They’re thirty now, and in interviews they almost always cite Bruce as one of their key musical influences while growing up.
In concert, their sets often feature a terrific cover of Bruce’s “Dancing in the Dark,” and fortunately there are several great documents of it to chose from–so many, in fact, that I can’t choose just one.
So here’s a pairing, first from their Windmill Sessions appearance in January 2016…
…and a more confident performance just a couple months later on JOE Sessions.
Four years later, they’d get to perform it for Bruce himself… sort of.
Just prior to the release of Letter to You, Bruce gave a video interview to Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show.
The interview aired on Release Day a week later, and to mark the occasion the show invited Heathers to perform a live, socially distanced cover of “Dancing in the Dark” (which is probably the most apt way to perform that particular song, if you think about it).
Did Bruce get a chance to see the Macnamara sisters perform his greatest hit? Who knows, but we can hope that Ellie and Louise found a way to make a long-distance connection with their musical hero.
