Cover Me Round-Up: I’m on Fire (Part 2)

When it comes to covers, “I’m on Fire” is easily Bruce Springsteen’s most popular song.

The list of first-class renditions keeps growing faster than I can keep up with, so it’s time for another trip around the world to see how global musicians interpret Bruce’s 1985 hit single.

Let’s start with one of the older performances of the bunch: Troy Cassar-Daley and Sal Kimber’s lovely duet from Season 11 of the Australian television series RocKwiz in August 2013.

Cassar-Daley may not be a familiar name to my American readers, but he certainly is to my Australian ones. He’s had a string of hit country albums and won dozens of awards in his home country across his decades-long career.

Kimber was relatively new to the scene when she filmed that duet with Cassar-Daley, but she’s amassed a loyal following of her own both solo and with her band The Rollin’ Wheel.

When performed as a duet, “I’m on Fire” transforms from a song about obsession to one of connection, and their gentle, rolling arrangement creates a cool, romantic vibe.

Moving over to the European continent, let’s make a stop in Berlin and watch The Unknown Neighbour translate Bruce’s song from guitar to solo piano and harmonica in this 2015 video.

The Unknown Neighbour is singer-songwriter Sascha Zemke, and over the past few years he’s released a string of singles and an EP of his own music (well worth checking out here).

His cover of “I’m on Fire” grew on me throughout its three minutes, and by the bridge I’d realized that his arrangement sounds very much like what I’d expect a Springsteen-arranged piano version to sound like. And oh, that coda… perfection.

Next up: Italy. I filmed this video myself, at this year’s Cover Me contest in Bergamo last month, where Sardinian musician Simone Bernardini’s breathtaking performance was one of the event’s highlights. Simone leans into the dark, brooding core of Bruce’s song and plays up its more sinister elements, and it works tremendously well.

Simone finished in sixth place overall with the competition’s judges, but he was a crowd favorite, finishing in second place in the theater audience vote.

Moving on to the U.K., singer-songwriter Daniel Spiller and Mark Stanley team up for a captivating duet, released only a few weeks ago. Both Spiller and Stanley have powerful, high-register voices that underscore Bruce’s yearning lyrics, and I love the way their vocals intertwine.

Next up: Irish singer-songwriter Megan O’Neill. Megan is heading out on tour in just a few weeks, and recently she teased her fans with this lovely duet with Mark Caplice, recorded at the Moat Theater in Naas.

Megan and Mark’s vocals work beautifully together, and those moments between verses are just sublime. It seems like “I’m on Fire” might be on the tour set list based on Megan’s comments, so if you want to catch it performed live, check out her tour schedule here.

Finally, we return home to the U.S., where I’ll leave you with this wonderful cover of “I’m on Fire” by eighteen-year-old Phoebe Bridgers, way back in 2013. With the most traditional arrangement of the versions we’ve listened to today, it forces me to bend my creative cover rule a bit, but come on: it’s early Phoebe Bridgers. That’s worth an exception, isn’t it?

That’s it for this Cover Me Round-up installment, but as long as artists keep gravitating to a select few songs in Bruce’s catalog, trust me: there will be more.