There is a standout moment in the original version of Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire where his lyrics are darkly, deliberately ambiguous. For Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter Laura Silverstone, though, that’s what’s always made them so interesting.
Listening first as a teenager with big dreams and now here in Scotland, while on tour from the comfort of the campervan she calls home, this Springsteen song has always captivated her.
Laura’s version, released this Friday on indie label Last Night From Glasgow, strips it right back to pure acoustics – gentle lap-guitar and a very intimate vocal delivery, and a twist in its meaning that may very well surprise many.
“It’s a very raw story of desire and lust – something women have historically only been allowed to express as long as it benefited the heterosexual men in the room,” she says. “We’re changing that, turning it into a queer love story, sung by a woman, and to a woman.
“It’s a song that questions our perceived sexuality, healthily. That’s what I wanted to bring to the song. Springsteen is such an inspiration to me in my career. I really wanted to cover this song because I feel there is such a difference when it’s sung from a woman’s angle.”
The result is, in the best sense, disorienting. The song’s opening lines “Hey little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go and leave you all alone?” have always courted misreading.
“He’s the biggest feminist,” she says. “That’s how I know the song is meant in a raw but gentle way, and not something entirely creepy. And his politics – his entire anti-Trump tour, raising a peaceful army across America – that matters to me deeply. He’s always been on the right side of history.”
She has spent years hearing the song misinterpreted, the gentle desire of its narrator flattened into something far less nuanced than Springsteen intended.
Sung by a woman – she says – that ambiguity doesn’t disappear, but it deepens.
“I am now a woman talking to another woman,” she explains. “Saying: hey girl, did your man go and leave you all alone? I can do things that he can’t. It brings a queerness to it – suggesting a queer love affair. That’s how I interpret it. I think it turns it around on its axis. It’s now a very different message, but it still keeps that…suggestion.”
Silverstone’s connection to Springsteen runs deep, and personally so. The Basque-born, Scotland-based guitarist played her first-ever paid show for The Boss’s large fanbase in 2013, when his European tour brought thousands of devotees to Spain.
She sold her first demos that day, and his community has come back to her ever since, showing up, bringing friends, and booking her in venues all over the UK and Europe.
Springsteen himself even came down from the stage on one occasion to press his harmonica into her hands – along with a hug – she played the instrument for a decade before it finally gave out.
Her recording of I’m On Fire is, she says, a gift to that community. Something they can carry home when she isn’t there to play it live.
The release also marks Silverstone’s debut on Last Night From Glasgow, one of Scotland’s most respected independent labels, as part of a multi-album deal signed earlier this year.
It follows a period of extraordinary momentum for an artist who has built her audience almost entirely on the road – two European tours, a US debut, a standout set at Frank Turner’s Lost Evenings VIII, and appearances at HebCelt, Kelburn Garden Party, Fringe by the Sea and Dunbar Music Festival.
Her crowdfunded album Heartwood was listed among the eligible entries for the Scottish Album of the Year Awards, and she has since recorded new material at Lipaka Studios in Germany with producer Bob Vogston.
A limited edition of Heartwood on slate-blue vinyl – pressed at Seabass in East Lothian – the first time it’s been available in this format – is already available to pre-order ahead of a brand new album expected in 2027.
In January this year, she won the Danny Kyle Open Stage Award at Celtic Connections – the prize that has launched more careers in Scottish folk than perhaps any other – and will return to perform at the festival in 2027.
“I have so many people in my life pouring so much love to me,” she said, “It’s surreal seeing people connect with my songs and support me in such a deep and personal way.”
Her statistics tell part of the story – over 6,500 Spotify monthly listeners built organically, 1.5 million YouTube streams, 42,000 Instagram followers – but her reputation has been made, above all, by the force of her music and live performances.
BBC Introducing Scotland, Celtic Connections, Spain’s Got Talent (where she received the coveted Golden Buzzer in the 2023 semi-final and reached the live final), and a growing circuit of European venues have all played their part.
As she winds down her current travels in Europe as part of the World of Song tour with guitar poet Brian Gore and acclaimed Irish-Sierra Leonean singer-songwriter Loah, Silverstone is already gearing up for festival season appearing at the likes of Sound of Iona and Back Doune the Rabbit Hole this summer, plus others still to announce, along with her own headline shows later this year with promoters xfire live in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
“I had a lot of fun playing this track live over the past few months”, she said, “Springsteen is such an influence on my career,” she says.
“He has inspired me to write and play the way that I do in my own music. So it’s such a joy for me to see people enjoy hearing my interpretation too.”
- I’m On Fire by Laura Silverstone is released on Friday 22 May on Last Night From Glasgow. Pre-Save here: https://lastnightfromglasgow.lnk.to/imonfire
