#49 - I'm On Fire

Artist: Bruce Springsteen

Album: Born In The U.S.A.
Video: From YouTube.

This song was featured on the very first album I ever bought (actually a cassette tape).  Bruce Springsteen was, and remains, an all-time favorite of mine.  I've been lucky to see him perform live three times.  Nobody is better in concert than Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band.

New Jersey’s working class hero initially burst into the public consciousness with the 1975 masterpiece “Born To Run”.  Ten years later, his popularity peaked again on a much larger scale with the “Born In The U.S.A.” album.  Baseball, apple pie, Bruce Springsteen and all that.

The album produced a record-tying seven top 10 singles, including “I’m On Fire”, the fourth single released.  A spare, haunting track featuring little more than Bruce’s vocals and a synthesizer, it peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The song has been covered by dozens of artists, ranging from Johnny Cash to John Mayer to Tori Amos.

Clearly, “I’m On Fire” is about a man wrestling with his prurient urges.  But the dark and suggestive lyrics leave the song’s deeper meaning up for debate.  Taken literally, it can be inferred that the protagonist is a pedophile.  I disagree.  I happen to believe the song is multi-layered.

The video won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video in 1985.  The Boss gets to demonstrate some acting chops, portraying an auto mechanic tormented by his desire for a leggy female customer in a white Ford Thunderbird. 

Returning her car, he drives through the city and arrives at her mansion in the hills.  He walks up the stairs to her door and gazes into her open window.  He begins to ring the doorbell, but instead just smiles and shakes his head, placing the keys in her mailbox and walking away.  It’s an interesting look at Bruce’s shy and uncertain side.