Download Danko Jones' 'I'm Alive and On Fire' from 'True Blood'

Click here to listen to Danko Jones' "I'm Alive and On Fire"

"I'm Alive and On Fire," the title of this week's episode of True Blood, literally refers to the effects the sun has on the vampire Eric's skin after he gets drunk on fairy blood and tries to stay awake during the sunlight hours. It's also a metaphor for the many relationships beginning to burn up — or simmer down — among the supernaturals on the hit HBO series. "I'm Alive and On Fire" is also the name of a manic punk song by the Canadian band Danko Jones, and fittingly, the track played out over the end credits. You can stream the song above, or right-click here to download a free mp3.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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