It’s long been known that I’ve had trouble warming up to David Bowie despite loving 30 of his songs. That’s probably more songs than I love by a bands like The Rascals and The Turtles, both of whom I’m quick to defend at “underrated.” It’s less songs than I love by Iggy Pop, whose music with The Stooges I can say “I love,” excluding half of the Bowie-produced Raw Power, of course.
What I’ve kept to myself all these years is the list of 30 Bowie songs that I love. Today, at the request of Townsman Alexmagic, I am coming forth with this list. Thank you, Alexmagic, for encouraging me to publish these long-held secrets. Already I feel a weight lifting from my soul.
30 Bowie Songs I Love* (in no particular order)
- Space Oddity
- Changes
- Moonage Daydream
- Suffragette City
- Ziggy Stardust
- Starman
- Panic in Detroit
- Rebel Rebel
- Diamond Dogs
- Young Americans
- Fame
- Golden Years
- TVC15
- Sound and Vision
- Heroes
- Ashes to Ashes
- Star
- Hang Onto Yourself
- Soul Love
- Oh! You Pretty Things
- Kooks
- Quicksand
- Queen Bitch
- Breaking Glass
- The Jean Genie
- John, I’m Only Dancing
- Boys Keep Swinging
- DJ
- Sweet Head
OK, for those of you who took the time to count, that’s 29 Bowie songs I love.
*Not including “All the Young Dudes” and “Under Pressure”.
That’s definitely an Anthology-like list Mr Mod.
Speaking of Greatest Hits, I saw in the new Mojo, a review of “Rolled Gold +” A re-release w/ bonus cuts of the re-hased Stones Decca years. Maybe becuase it is is England, they don’t have all of the ABCKO releases
I’m glad I could act as your Bowie bodhisattva in this matter. Also glad to see Oh! You Pretty Things, Soul Love and Moonage Daydream in there. I do feel compelled, as an agent of spiritual purification, to ask about the omission of Life On Mars. Without judging, I ask: was this a case of like but don’t love, or do you in fact secretly hate it?
Either way I think you have to admit – if I’m not reading too much into the italicized nature of “Love” – that’s a pretty stellar list of songs to love for any one artist. If you consider that list, his collection of fine suits and his status as easily one of the top two or three mimes in rock history, is it really fair to ask any more from Bowie? Especially when all he asks in return is an occasional listen of his best material? And the soul of a baby. He needs that, too. For his magic powers.
“Life On Mars” made the “like but don’t love” list, a list I shall NOT reveal under any pressure!
Here’s the deal with the chasm between my love for his 29 recordings coupled with my liking of an additional probably 8-10 songs (mostly the tracks left off Hunky Dory and Ziggy, if you must know) versus my overall feelings of him as an artist: There are so many songs I HATE. And it took him, what, 25 albums to get me 39 songs I love or like? Shouldn’t I be able to like another dozen over all those albums? I really don’t. His batting average is terrible in terms of my tastes. Along with his influence on ’80s music, this pretty much sums up my longstanding beefs with Bowie the Artist.
You do realize, of course, that he also influenced virtually every great UK band from the late-’70s onward. Some of which you might like!
Shouldn’t that be weighed against all his supposed infractions? Put plainly, Bowie influenced more great artists than other successful acts we look upon scornfully for inspiring crap. I am referring to U2 and Springsteen.
Oats wrote:
Could you name 5 bands you have in mind? It wouldn’t surprise me if the Buzzcocks took a good deal of inspiration from Bowie, but the other punks??? I’m drawing blanks. Echo and the Bunnymen have some Bowie in them, but for years I didn’t like them specifically because of that. Who else? I hope I’m not embarrassed when you list a few obvious examples that aren’t coming to mind. Remember, almost singlehandedly ruined an entire decade’s mainstream music for me.
I have already weighed his 30 songs that I love against his infractions. He will be sentenced to one of those white collar institutions, not a chain gang. The reason I’m so hard on him is because he’s shown such flashes of brilliance with almost nothing in-between the great stuff and all the atrocities. I like a couple of those long tracks on Station to Station, for instance, but that side 2 stuff on Low might as well be Andreas Vollewander, or whatever that guy’s name is. Beside the song “Heroes”, that entire album doesn’t even sound like music to my ears.
By the way, my Inbox is already getting inundated with offlist support for my views on this subject. Let’s keep it in the Halls of Rock, OK? Be brave, my quiet storm of Bowie skeptics!
Funny, my interest in Bowie doesn’t really begin until Station to Station, and I’ve never even owned any of the records earlier than that. I’ve always meant to but never gotten around to it.
Why do you reward your offlist supporters when they so clearly have no friggin’ balls!
Joy Division
Buzzcocks and Magazine
Blur
Supergrass
(The not-so-secret truth of ’90s Britpop is that Bowie, not the Kinks, was the prime sonic source)
“Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.” I like most everything he did from ’72 to ’80 and, guess what? Other people agree with me! (If you don’t name names, why should I?) I find it patently ridiculous that he should be constantly hauled up on (cough!) Rock Crimes because some Brits with eyeliner and shoulder-pads pushed poor, wee, innocent The Power and the Glory off the cliff. I mean, plenty of rock folks are “down” with Bowie at this late date. It’s not like I’m asking for Rock Avatar status for Gary Kemp. I just kind of feel like you’re stuck in 1981 WRT this particular issue.
BTW, the above was written with nothing but respect and honor for all Townspeople. Esp. you, Mr. Mod. Seriously. I just want to make sure my argument was made clear enough (albeit with some sarcasm) sans lazy AMG citations etc.
I was not giving props to my Quiet Storm but chiding them!
I hear the faintest trace of Bowie in Joy Division. Not much more than that. I hear Neu! all over Joy Division. Neu! has songs that sound like instrumental tracks for Joy Division.
The other bands you mention are post-late-70s. I thought that’s what you said. I’ll grant you the positive influence they took from Bowie. Same goes for Suede, who weren’t bad, from what I recall.
Queue Berylant to point out that Mick Ronson produced some Morrissey/Smiths album, right?
The spirit and content of your retorts are excellent! Don’t let the Quiet Storm hold you back.
I think I agree with Oats. Bowie’s 70’s run was stellar. It was also largely unnoticed. I don’t blame him for unleashing Culture Club on us and killing Iggy Pop. He made great music and people ignored him. All through high school I can remember getting shit because I liked “That Fag.” But on our Cool-O-Meter, which was apparently not the widely accepted model, Bowie was it. If you got in the car and couldn’t dig Ziggy Stardust, you got ditched. If you knew all the words to that album, you could party fo’ free anytime.
Wouldn’t Robert Smith still be living in his mom’s basement were it not for Bowie? Roxy Music got a lot more popular when they became Bowie Lite, too.
Oh yeah, your 30th song that you love is Cracked Actor. That’s the one. I’m sure of it.
Mr. Mod, are you persistent beyond all understanding or are you stacking the deck?
I couldn’t name 5 Bowie songs past Station To Station but I recognize (and like if not love) all but a few from your list.
So, have you really listened to 25 Bowie albums and seriously love nothing from the last dozen or are you making assumptions?
Mr. Mod, I share your skepticism about Bowie, but I have to admit that’s because I’ve never been interested enough to hear a huge swath of his work. I heard a lot of his work at one point in time but haven’t listened again in years and don’t want to. So I can’t really help you. E Plurb turned me on to Hunky Dory, and he’s right, I do like that album.
Now that I’m thinking of it, my dislike of Bowie may be related to the recent question of fans who are hard to take. Along with the “I’m a common man” lovers of Sprinsteen at GWU, I remember all the rich party ladies who loved Bowie. One of them was my girlfriend for about a year, and I liked her well enough, screwed up though she was. But wow, those other women. Couldn’t stand ’em. Lots of cocaine and living off Daddy’s money and their wealthy drug dealer boys and really really rude, and all of them dug the Dave. Huh. Looks like I’m harboring some resentment here that I haven’t thought about in some years, so thanks for that.
Actually now that you mention it, Your Arsenal (the one Morrissey album Ronson did produce) is one of Morrissey’s best solo works and is, in fact, my favorite studio album of his (not counting The Smiths) from start to finish. My other favorite Morrissey album (Bona Drag) is really just a compilation of singles and B-sides released from 1988 to 1990 and it’s almost as good as any Smiths album (or at least I used to think so).
However, I still fail to see what any of this has to do with the best Bowie songs thread. Personally, I was a bit disappointed not to see “Be My Wife” (my favorite Bowie song other than maybe “Up the Hill Backwards”) on the list, but maybe that’s #30? Either way, what a great list of songs. You’ve made the argument for him as one of the greatest artists in rock history just based on that list alone.
Now that’s something I’d like to see attempted on here!
But wow, those other women. Couldn’t stand ’em. Lots of cocaine and living off Daddy’s money and their wealthy drug dealer boys and really really rude, and all of them dug the Dave.
It’s amazing how Bowie seems to have been and continue to be the soundtrack for the wealthy coke set. Why Bowie in particular? What was it about his music/image that’s a magnet to this demographic?
Trolleyvox, isn’t it obvious? He was the living embodiment of the ’70s Coke Generation before Disco came to the fore. I’ll try to point out some of the details later, but my “cigarette break” is over.
I heard a story about how Keith Richards pulled Bowie aside to advise him to lighten up on his partying. How gigantic a partier do you have to be get that lecture!
Dashiell Hammett, a severely chronic alcoholic, once said he couldn’t hang around William Faulkner because “that guy drinks too much.” To be fair to Hammett, though, when Faulkner was in England to receive the Nobel Prize, he tried to convince his temporary butler that it was a standard American custom to drink a fifth of whiskey before breakfast.
Probably the obsession with designer fashions. Dude was/is a clothes horse. Did you see that lime green suit in the Tin Machine video? It’s one thing to wear something like that onstage, but I think that demo dresses that way in real life, or what passes for it.
Until the last 10 years or so, when he’s been more willing to show his human side, Bowie has also relished projecting that icy/another plane image. Part of it’s his natural and well-groomed Look, but another part is simply the whole way he postured through the ’70s and ’80s. Very rich-girl/cokehead-like, if you ask me.
The rich cokehead girl thing reminds me that the first time I saw Bowie, 77 I think; wherever the Stage album came from, was the first time I had ever seen real guys in drag. Most of those guys were pretty stunning, and the real women they were with were dressed to kill and there were lots of couples where the girl was in a tux and the guy was dressed like the Prom Queen. It was weird, but it was also really cool for a fifteen year old. My parents would have freaked if they knew what was going on there.