The 2010s File Feature
Set The Fire To The Third Bar
The Recording and Chart History of "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" by Snow Patrol Featuring Martha Wainwright "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" is a track by t…
01 The Story
The Recording and Chart History of "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" by Snow Patrol Featuring Martha Wainwright
"Set The Fire To The Third Bar" is a track by the Northern Irish-Scottish rock band Snow Patrol, featuring Canadian singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright. It originally appeared on Snow Patrol's fourth studio album, Eyes Open, released in May 2006 on Fiction Records and Interscope Records. The album was a massive international commercial success, largely on the strength of the lead single "Chasing Cars," which became one of the most-played songs in British radio history and achieved substantial success in North America as well. "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" occupied a different commercial position within the album, functioning as an atmospheric, intimate duet that contrasted with the anthemic scale of the album's bigger moments.
Eyes Open was recorded at various studio locations and represented a significant creative and commercial leap for Snow Patrol, who had built their reputation through earlier albums with a more underground indie rock following. Frontman Gary Lightbody wrote "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" as a duet from the outset, with the interplay between two voices essential to the song's emotional architecture. The choice of Martha Wainwright as the female voice was musically well-judged; Wainwright, daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle and sister of Rufus Wainwright, brought to the track a rich folk tradition and a vocal quality that was distinctly warm and slightly weathered, qualities that complemented Lightbody's more plaintive indie rock delivery.
The production of the track by Jacknife Lee, who also produced the broader Eyes Open album, created a spare, restrained sonic environment. Unlike many of Snow Patrol's more layered, effects-heavy recordings, "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" relied on a relatively unadorned arrangement, with acoustic guitar, piano, and subtle atmospheric elements supporting the two vocalists. This sonic restraint was deliberate, allowing the emotional content of the duet itself to function as the primary expressive element without being overwhelmed by production density.
The song's chart history in North America was notably delayed relative to its album release. While Eyes Open was released in 2006, "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" did not appear on the Billboard Hot 100 until January 30, 2010, when it debuted at position 86. This late chart appearance was driven by a digital sales surge that occurred well after the original album cycle had concluded, a phenomenon that became increasingly common in the late 2000s and early 2010s as digital download platforms gave catalog tracks extended commercial lives. The song had been gaining streaming and download traction through television placements and ongoing word-of-mouth recommendation.
The track reached its peak position of number 54 on the Hot 100 on the chart dated February 6, 2010, representing a significant climb from its debut position in a single week. It spent five weeks on the chart in total before descending off the bottom. The chart run, though brief, confirmed the song's status as a genuine commercial property years after its original album release, and its Hot 100 presence in 2010 introduced it to a new cohort of listeners who may not have encountered the Eyes Open album during its original release window.
The song had already been a known quantity in the United Kingdom, where Eyes Open debuted at number one and Snow Patrol were a dominant presence in the mid-2000s rock landscape. In North America, the band's profile was somewhat more modest, though "Chasing Cars" had given them genuine commercial traction in the United States, and "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" benefited from the goodwill that song had generated. The Twilight soundtrack connection that some contemporaries enjoyed was not a factor for this particular track, but the general cultural appetite for introspective, atmospheric indie rock with emotional weight made it well-suited to the listening environment of the late 2000s.
Martha Wainwright's profile was also a factor in the song's enduring appeal. She had released her self-titled debut album in 2005 and built a devoted following in folk and indie rock circles, and her participation brought a slightly different audience demographic to the track than Snow Patrol's standard fanbase would otherwise encounter. This cross-pollination of audiences contributed to the song's sustained discovery curve across the years between its 2006 release and its 2010 chart appearance.
The track stands as one of the more artistically distinctive recordings on Eyes Open, appreciated by critics and audiences alike for its emotional directness and vocal chemistry between Lightbody and Wainwright. It remains frequently cited in discussions of Snow Patrol's catalog as an example of the band at their most restrained and vulnerable, a counterpoint to their more stadium-oriented material.
02 Song Meaning
Themes and Cultural Meaning of "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" by Snow Patrol Featuring Martha Wainwright
"Set The Fire To The Third Bar" is a song about the specific, acute pain of physical separation from someone deeply loved. Its central emotional concern is the feeling of being at a remove from another person, not because the relationship has ended but because circumstances have placed distance between two people who remain emotionally close. This is distinct from the standard breakup song; the separation depicted is one of geography and circumstance rather than estrangement, which gives the song an unusual emotional coloring, part longing, part devotion, with an undertone of faith that reunion will come.
The title's imagery is drawn from the domestic detail of a heater or electric fire, specifically the idea of warming a cold space by turning on one of its heating elements. This quietly domestic image anchors what could otherwise be an abstractly emotional song in the texture of ordinary life, the particular mundane details of existing in a space that feels inadequate because the person who makes it feel like home is absent. Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody had a consistent gift for grounding large emotional experiences in small physical details, and the title phrase is a prime example of this technique.
The duet format is essential to the song's meaning. The alternation between the two voices, one perspective then another, creates the impression of two people describing the same experience of separation from their respective distances. The voices do not argue or contradict; they harmonize and mirror, suggesting that what makes the separation bearable is the knowledge that the other person is enduring the same feelings with the same intensity. This mutual suffering, paradoxically, becomes a form of connection across the distance that separates them.
Martha Wainwright's vocal contribution brings a quality that is simultaneously fragile and resilient. Her voice carries a natural grain and warmth that suggests lived experience rather than polished artifice, and this quality perfectly suits a song about the unglamorous reality of longing. The contrast between her timbre and Gary Lightbody's more ethereal indie rock tenor creates a complementary pairing that feels genuinely conversational rather than purely performative.
Culturally, the song resonated strongly with audiences navigating the emotional terrain of long-distance relationships, a subject that has always been present in popular music but which gained particular cultural salience in the mid-2000s as digital communication simultaneously made such relationships more sustainable and, paradoxically, more emotionally complicated. The song did not engage with technology directly but spoke to the emotional reality that connectivity tools addressed without fully resolving.
The song's inclusion on Eyes Open, an album dominated by more expansive and production-heavy material, gave it a special quality of intimacy within that context. It functioned as a moment of quiet within a recording that was otherwise frequently loud and anthemic, and this contrast amplified its emotional impact for album listeners. The sparse production choices reinforced the thematic content, creating a sonic environment that mirrored the emotional nakedness of the subject matter.
In the broader context of Snow Patrol's artistic output, "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" is frequently cited as one of their most emotionally accomplished recordings precisely because of its restraint and specificity. The song avoided the large, generalized emotional statements of their more arena-oriented material in favor of closely observed emotional particularity, and this choice paid dividends in the depth of connection audiences formed with it over the years following its release. Its belated chart appearance in 2010 confirmed that the song had developed a life well beyond its initial commercial context.
→ More from the 2010s File
View all 2010s hits →
Keep digging