![]() Ostensibly the tragic, French-chanson-and-50s pop-influenced finale to the Ziggy Stardust story, Rock’n’Roll Suicide’s epic coda seemed to take on a different, celebratory meaning as Bowie’s star rose, his howl of “You’re not alone / Give me your hands / You’re wonderful” summing up his effect on his fans. Tin Machine was a hard rock folly that largely hasn’t aged well, but I Can’t Read is the exception that proves the rule: a brilliant, agonised, self-baiting study of the creative inertia that had overwhelmed Bowie in the 80s, over a dense wall of sheet metal guitars and feedback.īowie in 1975. It occasionally feels a bit laboured, but its highlights rank high: a Space Oddity-referencing Pet Shop Boys remix was a hit, but the original of Hallo Spaceboy is pummelling, chaotic and hypnotic. Hallo Spaceboy (1995)Īfter a decade spent courting the mainstream, Bowie clearly intended Outside to be seen as a grand artistic statement. ![]() The music – arcing, frantic atonal guitar and gibbering backing vocals – sounds deranged Bowie sings like a man on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Once you get past the opening lines about the transgressive self-mutilating performance artist Chris Burden – “Tell you who you are if you nail me to my car” – the lyrics make virtually no sense at all. The lyrics are filled with regret, the vocal parched and pained behind a liberal sprinkling of electronic distortion – and, when it hits its chorus, anthemic in a way that hints at All the Young Dudes. Something in the Air (1998)Īnother overlooked 90s gem, from the coolly received Hours, Something in the Air is both limpid and melancholy. Either way, its leaps from eerie atmospherics to blasting, wall-of-noise chorus are really exhilarating: an overlooked triumph. There was something charming about Bowie’s enthusiastic drum’n’bass experiments on Earthling, but its finest track had nothing to do with them: Bowie suggested it was inspired by 60s soul and the Pixies. “I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey.” 43. Driven by Mick Ronson’s piano, it paints a poignant picture beautifully: an overhyped gig by a hot new band, one man in the crowd sadly looking on as his younger ex-lover becomes a star. Ziggy Stardust’s most emotionally affecting moment is one of its most straightforward songs. Photograph: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns 44. The music meanwhile is essentially a gentle reworking of Boys Keep Swinging: same key, same chords, only slower.ĭavid Bowie in Rotterdam, 1976. Inspired by the ongoing cold war and its attendant nuclear paranoia, its combination of anger and fatalism still sounds pertinent. The album Lodger opened with that rarest of things in the Bowie canon, a protest song. A stark, brass- and woodwind-assisted depiction of those – like Bowie himself – left with their noses pressed against the glass of the Swinging London party, it feels like a monochrome kitchen-sink drama compressed into three minutes. ![]() Tellingly, Bowie’s first great song centred on outsiders. Jittery but commercial funk is undercut by a dark lyric that returned to the subject of Bowie’s mentally ill half-brother Terry, this time brooding on his 1985 suicide. Hailed as a return to peak form on release, Black Tie White Noise was nothing of the sort, but its first single was authentically fantastic. The demo version – much talked up by Bowie in later years – remains unheard. A 2018 remix helps matters a little, and the stripped-back 00s live versions available online are better yet. A strange, genuinely great song about religion smothered by overproduction. The solitary moment that sparked on 1984’s inspiration-free Tonight. The melody is beautiful, the arrangement – very Visconti strings over electronic beats – perfectly poised. ![]() Its highlight sits somewhere between: ostensibly a love song that gradually reveals itself to be about God. Uniformly strong, the songwriting on Heathen stretched from the prosaic – the letter-to-adult-son of Everyone Says Hi – to the baffling. ![]()
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