Brad Butcher Stuns With Bruce Springsteen Cover On 'The Voice'

Rockhampton artist Brad Butcher made his mark with his Blind Audition on The Voice Australia this week, stunning the coaches and audience alike with a rousing cover of Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire.

A classic—and a near-country song—as it is, Butcher didn’t change up the arrangement just to be different; instead, while playing the main melody on an acoustic guitar, he only drew out some of the notes.

The perfect song for him, Butcher’s effortless rasp shone in the performance. He won over all four coaches on this season of The Voice Australia, earning a four-chair turn from Guy Sebastian, LeAnn Rimes, Adam Lambert, and Kate Miller-Heidke.

While his family believed Butcher would go with Sebastian due to his stepdaughter’s admiration for the singer, Butcher was most impressed by Rimes’ pitch, and he went over to her team after all the coaches voiced their enjoyment of his performance.

You can watch Brad Butcher’s Blind Audition on The Voice Australia below.

Proof that The Voice Australia has embraced country music, Butcher’s audition followed the charismatic performance from 16-year-old Beau Shearer. Last year, Bella Mackenzie made it to the semi-finals.

Sunburnt Country Music notes that Butcher is a two-time Golden Guitar winner from central Queensland. At the time of writing, he’s released five albums. His latest album, East Of Everything, was released in September 2023. The singer has also released a compilation album, Storyteller, and is due to appear at the Gympie Music Muster this month.

“East Of Everything is extremely close to my heart as it tells the stories of how I have arrived at this point in my life,” Butcher recalled in a statement. “It is full of indebtedness for my hometown of Mackay and my ‘now local’ the Capricorn Coast for giving me a resting place to call home and a bright future.”

Last August, Butcher’s song People Get Old (featuring Busby Marou) was one of the songs on ABC Country’s Grass Roots program.

We said about the song at the time, “People Get Old is one of those songs that is instantly relatable and cuts deep to the core of the human condition. A voice of velvet, a songwriter’s songwriter and an everyman Australian with lyrical content that few possess, Brad Butcher is an artist, a producer and a songwriter with a simple goal… to create music that matters.”