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100. JEAN GENIE
"A small Jean Genie snuck off to the city, strung out on lasers and slash-back blazers. Ate all your razors while pulling the waiters, talking 'bout Monroe and walking on Snow White. New York's a go-go and everything tastes right. Poor little Greenie, ooh-ooh"
Predictably, I'm kicking off with a
song that many would imagine higher in the list. A glam rock
stomp from '72 (72?, ffs - btw, album came out in '73, see link) which
Wikipedia says is inspired by the chugging R&B of The Yardbirds,
Jacques Dutronc, The Velvet Underground, and the erotically minded
existentialist author Jean Genet (obvs). Simple Minds are rumoured to
have named their band for this song.
Do you "love chimney stacks"?
"Yesterday was horrid day, 'cause Raymiond kicked my shin and mummy says if I am good, she'll let me go to school in August. Daddy shouted loud at mummy and I dropped my toast at breakfast and I laughed when Bonzo licked my face, because it tickled.I wonder why my daddy cries and how I wish that I was nearly five".
Do you "love chimney stacks"?
99. WHEN I'M FIVE
There's a school of thought that says pre-Ziggy everything bar Space
Oddity that the Dame put out was utter shite. It's a school of thought
I'm proud not to attend. I love the Deram/Anthony Newley years.
This won't be the last from that era, of that you can be sure, but it is probably the most twee thing you'll find on the list. Jumping in puddles, catching butterflies, and joining the May Day parade. Sounds like a brainstorm session for the creative team of Peppa Pig.
The first (but surely not the last) from 1977's Low. This is as much
an Eno song as a Bowie one and it's named after a street in West
Berlin.
Turn the lights off. Lie down. Let it wash over you.
"She asked me to stay and I stole her room. She asked for my love
and I gave her a dangerous mind. Now she's stupid in the street and she
can't socialise. Well, I love the little girl and I'll love her till the
day she dies".
Slightly (massively) overshadowed by the other two singles on the album of the same name, Ashes to Ashes and Fashion, this, nonetheless, is a fun piece of ramalama horror schlock action. Wikipedia makes comparisons with Joy Division's She's Lost Control and Iggy Pop's albums from about a lustrum earlier. Robert Fripp's on form on this track which comes from an album that suffered by coming out after the Berlin period and before Let's Dance.
It's over eight minutes long and features Mick Ronson making a glorious racket on lead guitar, Tony Visconti on bass, and Woody Woodmansey on drums. Something of a classic line up.
74. THE KOOKS
"Will you stay in our lovers' story? If you stay you won't be sorry 'cause we believe in you. Soon you'll grow so take a chance with a couple of kooks hung up on romancing".
One of the nicest, and silliest, songs about fatherhood I think I've ever heard. The Kooks is the first (but surely not the last?) track from 71's Hunky Dory.
Duncan Jones, Bowie's son - who it's about, went on direct Source Code and Moon so the song, nor having a famous rock star father one would presume, did him no harm. Song covered by a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly: Tindersticks, Madness, Kim Wilde, Smashing Pumpkins, and Robbie Williams. Plus, of course, the band The Kooks named themselves are it.
"And if you ever have to go to school remember how they messed up this old fool. Don't pick fights with the bullies or the cads 'cause I'm not much cop at punching other people's dads. And if the homework brings you down then we'll throw it on the fire and take the car downtown".
73. THE SECRET LIFE OF ARABIA
"I was running at the speed of life through morning's thoughts and fantasies. Then I saw your eyes at the cross fade".
Another great, quite OTT, vocal work out on this, our 4th track from "Heroes". Written by Bowie, Eno, and Carlos Alomar. Covered by Nina Hagen and Billy Mackenzie from The Associates.
72. WATCH THAT MAN
Our second track from Aladdin Sane.
Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray accused this song, and others from the album, of being "written too fast, recorded too fast and mixed too fast". Others remarked on similarities to The Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street LP.
Some great lines like "a lemon in a bag played the tiger rag and the bodies on the screen stopped bleeding.Yeah I was shaking like a leaf for I couldn't understand the conversation. Yeah I ran to the street, looking for information" and some nice piano from Mike Garson.
71.TIS A PITY SHE WAS A WHORE
"Man, she punched me like a dude"
First track from 2016's Blackstar features some great squalling sax and takes its name from a play by Jacobean and Caroline dramatist John Ford. Bowie claimed of the song "if Vorticists wrote rock music it might have sounded like this".
"She kept my cock" is quite a line!
70.THERE IS A HAPPY LAND
"There's a special place in the rhubarb fields underneath the leaves. It's a secret place and adults aren't allowed there, Mr. Grownup. Go away, sir".
The second track from Bowie's twee, Anthony Newley inspired, debut features lyrics about chicken pox, flying kites, learning to ride your bike, and climbing trees. It ends with Bowie imaging what a six year old scat singer might sound like. Sillier than I remember to be honest!
69. SUE (OR IN A SEASON OF CRIME
"Sue, I found your note that you wrote last night. It can't be right. You went with him. Sue, I never dreamed. I'm such a fool. Right from the start you went with that clown".
Our second selection from ★ features an arrangement from Minnesota's Maria Schneider who's also got a co-writing credit along with Paul Bateman and Bob Bhamra. It's quite a skeletal, almost crypto-funk, affair with lyrics about clinics, x-rays, and "endless faith in hopeless deeds".
"Why too dark to speak the words?".
68. HALLO SPACEBOY
"This chaos is killing me".
The nineties are unlikely to be the most prominently featured decade in this list but here's a track from 95's Outside, a co-write with Eno that saw a remix from The Pet Shop Boys and one he's performed with both Nine Inch Nails and The Foo Fighters.
It's the first from Outside so far - but is it the only?
"Do you like girls or boys? It's confusing these days".
67. WEEPING WALL
Third track from Low in the top 100 has been, incorrectly, described as 'dreary' somewhere on the Internet. 'Atmospheric' would be more apt. DB tries to evoke the misery of the Berlin Wall (and succeeds fairly well I'd say) by playing all the instruments himself (including a vibraphone and a chamberlin) and, according to Wikipedia, riffing on the traditional ballad Scarborough Fair
66. MAID OF BOND STREET
"This girl is made of loneliness. A broken heart for the boy that she once knew doesn't want to know her any more".
My 3rd selection from Bowie's '67 debut is that chirpy, yet sad, tale of hailing cabs, lunches with executives, jealousy, envy, and the cutting room floor. Darker than it sounds.
"This girl is a lonely girl. Takes the train from Paddington to Oxford Circus, buys the Daily News
65. THE NEXT DAY
"First they give you everything that you want then they take back everything that you have. They live upon their feet and they die upon their knees. They can work with Satan while they dress like the saints. They know God exists for the devil told them so. They scream my name aloud down into the well below".
Title track, and the second selection, from 2013's The Next Day is a tale of whores, gormless and braying crowds, women dressed as men, and soggy paper bodies. Some got upset at its perceived mocking of Christianity. They ought to get out more.
Features three very noisy guitars. Bowie himself, David Torn (jazz fusion session dude from NY state), and Gerry Leonard who's played with Suzanne Vega and Rufus Wainwright.
"Here I am not quite dying. My body left to rot in a hollow tree. Its branches throwing shadow on the gallows for me".
64. A NEW CAREER IN A NEW TOWN
Fourth song from Low and third instrumental from that album.
It's a bit more upbeat than the other two so far. In reality the second, instrumental, side of Low needs to be listened to in its entirety rather than as individual pieces - but that's not the protocol with this list!
63. MEMORY OF A FREE FESTIVAL
"The children of the summer's end gathered in the dampened grass. We played our songs and felt the London sky resting on our hands. It was God's land. It was ragged and naive. It was heaven".
The third track from DB's second album is, as its title suggests, dripping with wishy-washy lyrics and hippy imagery. Ecstasy, white balloons, and sun machines all crop up along with the ol' ivory vibrant cloud.
It's an homage to a free festival held at Croydon Road Recreation Ground in Beckenham in August 1969 and features Bowie playing a kiddies toy organ from Woolworths. At times it sounds like it could go off in an Incredible String Band direction which is a massive plus point for me.
"We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes and saw machines of every shape and size. We talked with tall Venusians passing through and Peter tried to climb aboard but the captain shook his head and away they soared. Climbing through the ivory vibrant cloud".
"I kissed a lot of people that day".
62. RUBBER BAND
"In 1910 I was so handsome and so strong. My moustache was stiffly waxed and one foot long and I loved a girl while you played teatime tunes".
FOURTH song from Bowie's debut won't delight the purists but it's an era I have a great affection for. When the single was released in December '66 few others did. It flopped. Which wouldn't have been a surprise. Everything Bowie had ever released had flopped at that point.
"I hope you break your baton".
61. SUBTERRANEANS
Our 5th track from Low and it's the fourth, and thus final, choice from that album's almost completely instrumental second side. This track does have some very brief, very hard to decipher lyrics that come in just before the fourth minute of the song.
60. LADY GRINNING SOUL
"She'll come, she'll go, she'll lay belief on you. Skin sweet with musky odour".
The third selection from Aladdin Sane sees Bowie in glam balladeer mode talking about clothes strewn around the floor, beetle cars, and "the fullness of her breast".
Has been compared to a James Bond theme and heavily features Mike Garson's piano. Garson described his playing as "French with a little Franz Liszt thrown in". Covered by Momus and Anna Calvi.
59 - THE BEWLAY BROTHERS
"And so the story goes they wore the clothes, they said the things to make it seem improbable.
"He's chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature".
58 - LAZARUS
"Look up here, I'm in heaven. I've got scars that can't be seen. I've got drama, can't be stolen. Everybody knows me now".
Our third track from Blackstar was its lead single with that video. It's imbued with a creeping sense of dread which seems only too appropriate now we know what was in David's mind when he wrote and recorded it.
The last Bowie single released during his lifetime and was his first top 40 hit in the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA in more than twenty-eight years. It's a fitting epitaph to such a majestic career. I don't think you'll get much argument about that.
"By the time I got to New York I was living like a king. Then I used up all my money. I was looking for your ass".
"You know, I'll be free just like that bluebird".
57 - JOIN THE GANG
From the sublime to the ridiculous.
From 2015 back to 1967 and my FIFTH selection from DB's debut album of jaunty tunes for children old and young.
This one tells of sitar playing Johnny who's an existentialist, Molly with an acid full of soul, and Arthur the singer who drinks two bottles just before he goes on stage. It was quite a journey from this to Lazarus!
52 - SELL ME A COAT
"A winter's day, a bitter snowflake on my face. My summer girl takes little backward steps away. Jack Frost took her hand and left me. Jack Frost ain't so cool".
SIXTH selection from the debut album features Dave singing and la la la'ing about coats with buttons of silver and little patch pockets. Memories of sitting in Shep's room at Mrs Uriarte's house with him and Bugsy giggling away to this before putting on a blast of Hot Chocolate and heading down The Fox & Hounds in Tadley to try to get rid of a Midway Still LP, only to find the cigarette machine doubled up as a lifeboat!
"See my eyes, my window pane. See my tears like gentle rain. That's the memory of a summer day".
51 - SWEET THING/CANDIDATE/SWEET THING (REPRISE)
I'm not sure if this counts as one, two, or three songs but when I borrowed the cassette from Forest Hill library not long afer moving to London in 1996 it was listed as if all one song and, in my mind, it always has been - and probably always will be.
Remarkably, it's the first song on the list from 74's Diamond Dogs. It's probably not too much of a spoiler to reveal it won't be the last.
Wikipedia informs me that this contains the lowest note Bowie had ever recorded in the studio (C2) until Heathen's I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spacecraft in 2002! The Candidate part has namechecks for Charlie Manson and Cassius Clay and, elsewhere, there's references to jumping in the river holding hands, bars on the end of the street, "poisonous people", and "bullet proof faces". It's a long one too. Nine minutes in total.
50 - SPEED OF LIFE
Sixth track from Low and it's the one that introduces that wonderful album. It sets the scene about as perfectly as anything could. I don't need to say any more about this one.
49 - TVC-15
Station to Station is surely the most under rated Bowie album and there will, SPOILER ALERT, be more tracks from it soon.
Couldn't work out how to write about this and told my friend Darren so. Told him it was about Iggy Pop doing so much acid he thought the telly was eating his girlfriend and Mr Noire correctly pointed out that's a good enough story - and it is. It's a tune too.
48 - FASHION
"There's a brand new dance but I don't know its name that people from bad homes do again and again. It's big and it's bland, full of tension and fear. They do it over there but we don't do it here".
It's hotting up now. This 1980 single was ranked as the eighth best of the year by NME (the top seven were Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division), Going Underground (The Jam), Mirror in the Bathroom (The Beat), Atmosphere (JD again), Your Cassette pet (Bow Wow Wow), and Private Life (Grace Jones). Oh, and another Bowie single which we'll meet up with later.
Robert Fripp gets to do his cubist funk thing here, it reached number 5 in the UK charts and was covered by Frank Black, The Dandy Warhols, Glamma Kid whose late nineties dancehall version is quite a thing, and the charmingly named Die Lady Di!
"We are the goon squad and we're coming to town. Beep-beep. Beep-beep ".
47 - STAY
"This week dragged past me so slowly, the days fell on their knees. Maybe I'll take something to help me. Hope someone takes after me. I guess there's always some change in the weather. This time I know we could get it together".
The Station to Station tracks are coming like buses now! This one sees Earl Slick knocking out a funky riff as Bowie lets fly with a pretty dramatic vocal about a 'heartwrecker'. For such a handsome chap, he does seem to get dumped on a lot.
46 - DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
"Let me put my arms around your head. Gee, it's hot, let's go to bed".
Who doesn't like a bit of doo-wop? Fourth track from Aladdin Sane and it's only in researching this list I found out that the lyrics are about inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic future watching porn films because they've forgotten how to make love! Not your standard doo-wop subject matter!
Also it's unlikely any other song, doo-wop or any other genre, features namechecks for both Swiss psychiatrist (and author of Modern Man in Search of a Soul) Carl Jung and Neasden model and cultural icon Twiggy! Mott the Hoople turned it down but it's been covered by Def Leppard and Morrissey, two acts best avoided these days.
"Try to get it on like once before when people stared in Jagger's eyes and scored like the video films we saw".
45 - UNCLE ARTHUR
"Uncle Arthur likes his mommy. Uncle Arthur still reads comics. Uncle Arthur follows Batman".
Shocking to some but this is the SEVENTH track of Bowie's jaunty debut - and it's not even the last!
44 - ALADDIN SANE (1913-1938-197?)
"Who'll love Aladdin Sane? Millions weep a fountain, just in case of sunrise".
Fifth up from Aladdin Sane is the title song (of sorts). Inspired by Bowie's half-brother Terry's schizophrenia, the years in brackets are the years before each World War started. Bowie believed that the 1970s, at some point, would see the start of World War III!
Musically, it's worth noting Mike Garson's eccentric piano solo which the NME likened to work of New York free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor. The 1970s NME writers knew what free jazz was!
"Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise"!
43 - THE PRETTIEST STAR
Sixth from Aladdin Sane is a song Bowie wrote for his wife to be, Angela. In, apparently, the Greek hassapiko dance style as a tribute to Angie's Cypriot roots! Marc Bolan played guitar on the original but Mick Ronson was on axe duty by the time it turned up on the Aladdin Sane album. Covered by Ian McCulloch and Jad Fair!
42 - LITTLE WONDER
"Stinky weather, fat shaky hands, dopey morning doc, grumpy gnomes".
First (and only?) track from 97's Earthling sees Bowie briefly, and with some panache I thought, flirt with drum'n'bass. Could, perhaps, be the only song that features the Amen break AND namechecks all seven dwarves!
"Mars happy nation sit on my karma. Dame meditation take me away".
41 - CHINA GIRL
"I could escape this feeling with my China girl. I feel a wreck without my, little China girl. I hear her heart beating loud as thunder".
Our second selection from Let's Dance, a co-write with Iggy Pop, originally came out on Iggy's 1977 Idiot LP. But Bowie took it to number two during possibly his greatest chart run of hits in the UK ever.
Produced by Nile Rodgers, who manages to make a song with lyrics about "visions of swastikas" and feeling "tragic like Marlon Brando" into something of an odd orientalist disco pop classic.
40 - JOHN, I'M ONLY DANCING
"Well, Annie's pretty neat, she always eats her meat. Joe is awful strong, bet your life he's putting us on".
Bowie's big gay, or at least bi, anthem is a cracking tune and he recorded it twice. In '74 and again in '79 although it never appeared on any offical album. just compilations etc;
Covered by The Polecats and The Chameleons amongst others.
39 - CHANGES
"Still don't know what I was waitin' for and my time was runnin' wild. A million dead end streets and
Third choice from Hunky Dory is this deathless classic that's described on Wikipedia, reasonably enough, as "a manifesto for his chameleonic personality". Covered by Seu Jorge, Bananarama, The Puppini Sisters, and Lindsay Lohan! Oh, and Bowie did backing vocals for Butterfly Boucher's 2004 version which appeared on the Shrek 2 soundtrack!
"Strange fascinations fascinate me".
38 - WHERE ARE WE NOW?
The 2nd track from The Next Day LP was released on Bowie's 66th birthday and it seemed, to most observers, to have come out of nowhere.
Widely, and correctly, considered a final return to form it reached number six in the UK singles chart and was his biggest hit for over twenty-six years. A slow, mournful, elegiac vibe permeates the entire song.
"Had to get the train from Potsdamer Platz. You never knew that. That I could do that. Just walking the dead".
"As long as there's sun. As long as there's sun. As long as there's rain. As long as there's rain. As long as there's fire. As long as there's fire. As long as there's me. As long as there's you".
37 - FAME
"Fame makes a man take things over. Fame lets him loose, hard to swallow. Fame puts you there where things are hollow. Fame, it's not your brain, it's just the flame that burns your change to keep you insane".
Only our second track from the Young Americans LP (outrage, I imagine some of you saying). A co-write with Carlos Alomar and some chap called John Lennon. It's something of a masterclass in pared down funk rock and befitting its classic status has been covered by a fairly lengthy list of artists including The Eurythmics, Pearl Jam, Jay-Z, Smashing Pumpkins, James Brown, Duran Duran, and George Michael.
36 - LOVE YOU 'TIL TUESDAY
"Who's that hiding in the apple tree, clinging to a branch? Don't be afraid it's only me, hoping for a little romance".
The eighth track on Bowie's debut and the purists are about to explode! I've stated my reasons for including these tracks earlier and I'm sticking by them,
This one actually picked up praise at the time from Record Mirror and Melody Maker whose singles that week were being reviewed by Syd Barrett who called it "very chirpy"!
"Well, I might stretch it till Wednesday".
35 - MOONAGE DAYDREAM
"I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa coming for you. I'm the space invader, I'll be a rock 'n' rollin' bitch for you. Keep your mouth shut, you're squawking like a pink monkey bird and I'm busting up my brains for the words".
"The church of man, love, is such a holy place to be". Moving away from 'very chirpy' to full on glam rock'n'roll, it's our third track from Ziggy Stardust (it's not much of a spoiler to say it won't be the last) and was first released by David's band, Arnold Corns. Who were named after the Pink Floyd song Arnold Layne.
Ronson's guitar sounds almost on fire at some points. Or beamed in from some alternate dimension. It's no wonder this one, like so many others, proved popular to cover with versions by 10,000 Maniacs, Beth Ditto, The Chameleons, LA Guns, and Terrorvision.
"Keep your electric eye on me babe. Put your ray gun to my head. Press your space face close to mine, love. Freak out in a moonage daydream. Oh yeah".
34 - SUFFRAGETTE CITY
They come like buses, these Ziggy tracks, don't they?
Influenced by Little Richard (as all great music is) and influencing most things that came after.
33 - OH! YOU PRETTY THINGS
"Wake up you sleepy head, put on some clothes, shake up your bed. Put another log on the fire for me. I've made some breakfast and coffee. Look out my window and what do I see:- a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me. All the nightmares came today and it looks as though they're here to stay".
Hunky Dory track number four nods towards Aleister Crowley and Nietzsche (very much the main men in the 1971 Bowieverse) but was, alarmingly, originally recorded by Peter Noone from Herman's Hermits. His version is available on request.
32 -ALL THE YOUNG DUDES
"Well, Billy rapped all night about his suicide. How he'd kick it in the head when he was twenty-five. Speed jive, don't want to stay alive when you're twenty-five, and Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks & Sparks, and Freddy's got spots from ripping off the stars from his face. Funky little boat race. Television man is crazy saying we're juvenile delinquent wrecks. Oh, man, I need TV when I've got T.Rex. Oh brother, you guessed I'm a dude".
This one is better known by, and better served by, Mott the Hoople's version but Bowie wrote it and has played it live since the Ziggy Stardust tour so I think it warrants a place on the list.
31 - REBEL REBEL
"Hot tramp, I love you so!"
Only our second cut from 74's Diamond Dogs and this one is said to be Bowie's most covered track. Take a deep breath and consider versions by such disparate artists as Manic Street Preachers, Dead or Alive, Bryan Adams, Seu Jorge, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Iggy Pop and Lenny Kravitz, The Smashing Pumpkins, Duran Duran, and The Bay City Rollers!
30 - ZIGGY STARDUST
29 - ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR
My theme tune!
The seventh selection from Low is about constantly making the same mistakes over and over again!
The Jasmine in the song is reported to be Iggy Pop!
28 - GOLDEN YEARS
"Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel. Come get up my baby. Look at that sky, life's begun. Nights are warm and the days are young".
Track #4 from Station to Station was recorded, like everything on that album, during Bowie's cocaine zenith/nadir. Bowie claimed he offered this song up to Elvis who refused it and this Soul Train performance was when he became the second ever white artist (following Elton John!) to appear on the show!
"I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years. Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years".
27 - SPACE ODDITY
"Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Lift off"!
This is probably the first Bowie track I was aware of - even if I didn't know who he was at the time!
Inspired by Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey (and coming out five days before Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon). It became Bowie's first UK hit reaching number five in 1969 but, for years, it looked like it may be an albatross around his neck as he was starting, crazily in retrospect, to look like a one hit wonder.
When it was re-released in 1975 it became Bowie's first UK number one hit single.
"Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do".
26 - SOUL LOVE
"Stone love, she kneels before the grave. A brave son, who gave his life to save the slogans that hovers between the headstone and her eyes. For they penetrate her grieving".
Track #6 from Ziggy Stardust and it's time to give a shout out to Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey, the northern powerhouse of a rhythm section. Together with Bowie's initially sinister vocals, his saxophone playing, and the guitar of Mick Ronson this song seems to effortlessly find that sweet spot between funk and glam. Two genres, it has to be said, that Bowie excelled at.
"New love, a boy and girl are talking. New words, that only they can share in. New words, a love so strong it tears their hearts. To sleep through the fleeting hours of morning".
25 - THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD
"We passed upon the stair. We spoke of was and when. Although I wasn't there he said I was his friend. Which came as a surprise. I spoke into his eyes. I thought you died alone a long long time ago".
I'll 'fess up. I actually prefer Nirvana's version of this. They absolutely nail it. A rare example (see also Mott the Hoople) of an act improving a DB song. This was also covered by Lulu, Simple Minds, Midge Ure, Meat Puppets, and John Cougar Mellencamp
"Oh no, not me. We never lost control. You're face to face with the man who sold the world".
24 - BOYS KEEP SWINGING
"When you're a boy you can wear a uniform. When you're a boy other boys check you out. You get a girl. These are your favorite things when you're a boy. Boys. Boys. Boys keep swinging. Boys always work it out"
Fifth track from Lodger employs Eno's Oblique Strategies cards and resulted in guitarist Carlos Alomar playing drums and drummer Dennis Davis playing bass. It results in a weird bit of homoerotic pop and I guess you could consider some of the lyrics problematic but I believe the Goblin King when he says "I do not feel that there is anything remotely glorious about being either male or female. I was merely playing on the idea of the colonization of gender".
"When you're a boy you can buy a home of your own. When you're a boy, learn to drive and everything. You'll get your share when you're a boy".
23 - BLACKSTAR
"In the Villa of Ormen stands a solitary candle at the centre of it all".
"On the day of execution only women kneel and smile".
Fourth choice from Blackstar is the title track. Variously descrived as art rock, jazztronica, or avant-jazz, it was originally over eleven minutes long but iTunes won't post songs over ten minutes in length so Bowie and Tony Visconti edited it down to nine minutes and fifty seven seconds. Like the rest of the album it received huge critical acclaim but that didn't necessarily convert into chart placings!
"How many times does an angel fall? How many people lie instead of talking tall? He trod on sacred ground. He cried loud into the crowd. I'm a Blackstar. I'm a Blackstar. I'm not a gangster".
22 - WILD IS THE WIND
"Love me, love me, love me, love me, say you do. Let me fly away with you for my love is like the wind - and wild is the wind".
Impossibly romantic. Imagine how it would feel to have somebody write a song like this for you. I think having a love song written for and about you would be the most heart melting thing ever. Nobody's ever done it for me.
It's a very rare example of a song on this list that's not written by Bowie. Wild is the Wind was penned by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington and was originally recorded by Johnny Mathis in 1957 so it's the only cover version in this whole Top 100. I'm not usually a fan of Bowie's covers. Dancing in the Street with Mick Jagger was interesting only as a curio and nobody ever chooses Pin Ups as their favourite Bowie LP.
It's our fifth choice from Station to Station, an album that only has six songs on (will we complete the set? You can probably guess) and sees Bowie deliver an absolutely top class vocal performance despite being coked off his bonce at the time. Song's also been recorded by Nina Simone, George Michael, Barbra Streisand, Randy Crawford, Shirley Bassey, and Clan of Xymox. So if you're ever stuck for a link between Barbra Streisand and Clan of Xymox this is your go to place.
"You touch me. I hear the sound of mandolins. You kiss me with your kiss. My life begins. You're spring to me. All things to me".
21 - LET'S DANCE
20 - ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS
"I absolutely love you but we're absolute beginners, with eyes completely open but nervous all the same".
Another love song! One from 1986, an era in which Bowie, let's be honest, was pretty much at his creative nadir. This is the exception that proves the rule (for me, at least) although it's not as good as The Jam song of the same name that came a few years prior to it.
Its understated feel stood in stark contrast to the bombastic nature of much eighties pop although the production and saxophone fit in perfectly with the era. It's from Julien Temple's flop film of the same name and made number two in the UK charts. Held off the top spot by Diana Ross's Chain Reaction (now that's a tune). Covered by both Saint Etienne and, er, Carla Bruni!
"As long as we're together the rest can go to hell".
19 - LONDON BOYS
"Bright lights, Soho, Wardour Street. You hope you make friends with the guys that you meet. Somebody shows you round. Now you've met the London boys things seem good again, someone cares about you".
Me and my mates Shep and Bugsy used to sample local 'produce' in Shep's spare room at Mrs Uriarte's house in Tadley and while we were tripping out we'd listen to early Bowie and Hot Chocolate (as mentioned earlier in this list - but it bears repeating). Great great memories and this song is the one I remember most strongly. I even came up with a theory, totally untrue, that Bowie was, like us, a smalltown boy who'd moved to London and got bullied and forced to do drugs by older, more streetwise boys.
This was the b-side of Rubber Band (number sixty-two in this list) and was covered by Marc Almond who, coming from Southport, possibly had the same reading of the song as me and my mates. What an underrated pop star Marc Almond is.
"The first time that you tried a pill you feel a little queasy, decidedly ill. You're gonna be sick, but you mustn't lose faith. To let yourself down would be a big disgrace".
18 - STATION TO STATION
So that's it. The full set. Every single song from Station to Station has made the Top 100 and it seems right and proper that the title track, all ten minutes plus of it, is the pick of the bunch.
We hear Bowie sing of "the return of the Thin White Duke throwing darts in lover's eyes", "one magical moment to Kether to Malkuth", and how "the European cannon is here". But when he claims "it's not the side effects of the cocaine" I think we all know that it very much is the side effects of the cocaine.
In fact, this song is a gak fulled odyssey and a trip into the mind of a paranoid seventies androgynous rock star. David Peace could write a book about it. Todd Haynes could make a film about it. You can castigate drug users all you like but who can honestly say that back in 1976 they weren't snorting a Bolivian mountain's worth of toot and writing ten minute songs about Aleister Crowley, gnosticism, and Kabbalah? The David Robert Jones army did not march across the Andes on Inca Cola.
17 - "HEROES"
"I wish you could swim like the dolphins. Like dolphins can swim".
This one regularly tops Bowiephiles lists of his best songs but it's number seventeen on my list. The sixth track from the album of the same name certainly has an anthemic quality - although, at one point, it started getting played just a bit too much. Sporting events and the like. Never had Bowie down as a big sports fan.
Rolling Stone called it the 46th greatest song ever, NME the 15th. Apparently it's a reference to the Neu song Hero and if you're a Bowie fan and you've never checked out Neu then what are you waiting for. Get to it.
A co-write with Eno it's been covered, with varying degrees of success, by Oasis, Depeche Mode, Peter Gabriel, Celtic Frost, Coldplay, Motorhead, King Crimson, Blondie, and TV On The Radio.
"We can be heroes, just for one day".
16 - WARSZAWA
The 8th choice from Low is a mostly instrumental, almost ambient, number co-penned with Eno and the inspiration for Joy Division's pre-Joy Division name, Warsaw.
Been covered by Nine Inch Nails, Philip Glass, and, for some unfathomable reason, Red Hot Chili Peppers.
15 - BE MY WIFE
"Sometimes you get so lonely. Sometimes you get nowhere".
The NINTH pick from Low is a bit of an outrider on the album with its traditional, but quite lovely, lyric and its ragtime piano opener. I'd be happy to see my imaginary bride walk up the aisle to this!
Released as the second single from Low it was Bowie's first 'flop' in over five years, since Changes, quite surprisingly.
"Please be mine. Share my life. Stay with me. Be my wife".
14 - MODERN LOVE
"I know when to go out and when to stay in, get things done. I catch a paper boy but things don't really change. I'm standing in the wind but I never wave bye-bye".
I remember this as a kid and I wasn't a big fan but time has been kind to it, a slow burner if you will. I really have little to say about it except it's an absolute banger. I'll leave it at that.
13 - STARMAN
"There's a starman waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds".
Seventh choice from Ziggy Stardust LP and sharing the lyrics seems a bit superfluous as you'd imagine everyone in the Western World knows them off by heart anyway.
12 - ASHES TO ASHES
"Do you remember a guy that's been in such an early song? I've heard a rumour from Ground Control".
Track #4 from Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is its lead single and the track that became Bowie's second UK number one. I can remember watching the video on TOTP as a confused eleven year old. I think I thought he was ripping off Visage (!) while at the same time being a little bit scared. It was, at the time, the most expensive video ever made! By David Mallet who went on to direct promos for Queen, Iron Maiden, and Rush.
11 - I DIG EVERYTHING
"I've got more friends than I've had hot dinners. Some of them were losers, but the rest of them are winners. Rick, John, Sally, a connection named Paul. Holy low on money, their intentions are tall. We smoke and talk in my room and we dig everything"
About a decade band I joined my friends Owen and Mike in running, and DJing at, an irregular (sometimes popular, sometimes less so) club night they'd called I Dig Everything. We'd play this most nights we did it - and we'd play other Bowie tunes too. But we'd also play everything from Wimple Winch to En Vogue, Angelic Upstarts to Lata Mangeshkar, and Magazine to Lou Reed. It was a lot of fun and this song brings back both those times and earlier ones.
But I still dig the tune. Its innocence. As a young Bowie talks about feeding the lions in Trafalgar Square, waving to policemen (who don't wave back), sunbathing for love, and getting a backstreet room in the bad part of town.
Released in August 1966, it was Bowie's last side for Pye and like everything he'd done up to that point it was, of course, a massive failure. But not for then still unborn me.
10 - SHE'S GOT MEDALS
"She'd walk through the door and she'd set up the drinks on the house. She played a good game of darts, and the men slapped her back and never took her out. She wore a trenchcoat khaki. Her hobnail boots were full of holes".
Another feature of I Dig Everything nights (and many other nights) seemed to be singing along, very loudly, very drunkenly, in the back of taxis to this on the way home. Not saying the taxi driver was playing it. They were probably listening to Magic FM or a very weak drum'n'bass remix of Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time.
Those not a fan of this Anthony Newley era will be pleased to know that this is the last selection from the time and everything that follows will be Bowie in his imperial pomp. Oh, and SPOILER ALERT, no room for Tin Machine.
"People say that when the moon is full and all the stars have gone to bed. You can see her ghost but that's a lie because the naughty woman isn't dead. She deserted on the previous morning. Replaced her uniform with dresses silk and green, called herself Eileen, came to London town. Now she's settled down".
9 - LIFE ON MARS?
"Sailors fighting in the dance hall. Oh man, look at those cavemen go. It's the freakiest show. Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy. Oh man, wonder if he'll ever know he's in the best selling show. Is there life on Mars?"
Track #5 from Hunky Dory in this Top 100 features piano from Rick Wakeman and some of Bowie's most cryptic, or perhaps just plain nonsense, lyrics (inspired, legend has it, by William Burroughs) though I do like to think that "it's on America's tortured brow that Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow" is Bowie being prophetic about the rise of Trump and America's move towards the more hideous elements of far right populism!
This reached no.3 in the UK charts when it came out as a single, Pitchfork named it the greatest single of the entire seventies (Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough was second and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? was third), and it's been covered by Barbra Streisand, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Seu Jorge, The Flaming Lips, The Dresden Dolls, and, of course, Momus. Bowie once introduced it like this:- "You fall in love, you write a love song. This is a love song"
"See the mice in their million hordes from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads. Rule Britannia is out of bounds to my mother, my dog, and clowns".
8 - YOUNG AMERICANS
"Scanning life through the picture window she finds the slinky vagabond. He coughs as he passes her Ford Mustang but Heaven forbid, she'll take anything".
Only our third pick from the album of the same title, this song is all Cadis, Chryslers, and President Nixon. It's even got a 'mama' and a 'gee' and, in lesser hands, could have been plain embarrassing. A white London boy almost pretending to be a black American shouldn't really work (there are plenty of black Americans around to do this kind of thing already) but Bowie, of course, has enough panache, adds another of his own spin, and has THAT voice so, obviously, it not only works but it's brilliant. It even broke Bowie in the US where his glam rock stuff had failed to gain traction outside the big cities.
Contains an almost direct lift from The Beatles "A Day in the Life" and, as if in payback, John Lennon appeared on the album. This song features David Sanborn on sax and a young Luther Vandross on backing vocals and was later covered by The Cure!
7 - BREAKING GLASS
"Baby. I've been breaking glass in your room again. Listen. Don't look at the carpet. I drew something awful on it. See, you're such a wonderful person but you got problems oh-oh-oh-oh. I'll never touch you".
That's the entire, slightly disturbing, lyric to the TENTH selection from Low (there's only one left, what could it be and will it crop up in the final six?). It features blistering guitar from Carlos Alomar, some excellent work from Eno on the Minimoog, and was a co-write with bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis.
At less than two minutes long and considering its paranoid, drug induced, almost violent feel it was, perhaps, an odd choice for a single. Less surprisingly, all things considered, it failed to bother the hit parade. It's bothering this top 100 alright, though!
6 - DIAMOND DOGS
"This ain't rock'n'roll, this is genocide".
"As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent you asked for the latest party. With your silicone hump and your ten inch stump, dressed like a priest you was, Tod Browning's freak you was".
The title track is only the 3rd song from 74's Diamond Dogs LP and I was reminded of its greatness when attending a SELFS event on January 8th with my friend Simon called 'Is David Bowie a God?'. What do you think?
"The Halloween Jack is a real cool cat and he lives on top of Manhattan Chase".
Halloween Jack isn't as well known as the Thin White Duke or, certainly, Ziggy but he does seem to be a pretty powerful invention. Living on top of an abandoned skyscraper in New York City, sliding down ropes like "Tarzie", and operating in some sort of grim dystopia of mutated bodies and hussies with featurless faces.
It's viewed as the song that started Bowie's move away from glam towards proto-punk. It rocks. Probably better then you remember (if you haven't listened to it for a while).
"In the year of the scavenger, the season of the bitch, sashay on the boardwalk, scurry to the ditch".
5 - PANIC IN DETROIT
"He looked a lot like Che Guevara, drove a diesel van, kept his gun in quiet seclusion, such a humble man. The only survivor of the National People's Gang. Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph, he wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone".
Track #7 from Aladdin Sane is Bowie recounting Iggy Pop's recounting of the 1967 Detroit Riots in which about twenty people actually died. Rolling Stone magazine described the song as "a paranoid descendant of Nowhere to Run by Detroits Martha and the Vandellas and the music has, fantastically. been summed up as a "salsa variation on the Bo Diddley beat".
"He laughed at accidental sirens that broke the evening gloom. The police had warned of repercussions. They followed none too soon. A trickle of strangers were all that were left alive".
4 - QUEEN BITCH
"Oh yeah, I'm up on the eleventh floor and I'm watching the cruisers below. He's down on the street and he's trying hard to pull sister Flo. Oh, my heart's in the basement, my weekend's at an all-time low 'cause she's hoping to score so I can't see her letting him go. Walk out of her heart, walk out of her mind".
The sixth track from Hunky Dory owes quite a debt to The Velvet Underground but not as much a debt as The Killers owe to this song. Parts of Mr Brightside are a straight rip! Brandon Flowers was reasonably honest about it, as was Bowie who always claimed this song as a tribute to Lou Reed and the VU. Althought if you listen to the primary riff you'll notice it's actually very similar to Eddie Cochran's Three Steps to Heaven.
It's a dance floor filler for sure as I've witnessed many times and everyone seems to enjoy the line about the "frock coat and bibberty bobberty hat". Covers have come from Eater, Green River, The Tragically Hip, and, appropriately enough, Lou Reed!
"She's an old-time ambassador of sweet-talking, night-walking games and she's known in the darkest clubs for pushing ahead of the dames. If she says she can do it then she can do it, she don't make false claims. But she's a queen and such are queens that your laughter is sucked in their brains".
3 - SOUND AND VISION
"Ah ah, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. Don't you wonder sometimes 'bout sound and vision? Blue, blue, electric blue, that's the color of my room where I will live. Blue, blue, pale blinds drawn all day, nothing to do, nothing to say. Blue, blue, I will sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision and I will sing, waiting for the gift of sound and vision. Drifting into my solitude, over my head. Don't you wonder sometimes 'bout sound and vision?"
For the top three I'll transcribe the entirety of the lyrics. Luckily there's not many here. This is the eleventh and final track from Low which means, like Station to Station, it's the only album in which EVERY single song on it has been deemed worthy a place in the Top 100. Quite rightly so as it's my favourite Bowie album and this is a personal list.
For a single, and an opening single on a major artist's album, it's an odd choice. The vocals only come in about halfway through, and, in some ways, it almost comes across as an afterthought or an out take but it's anything but. It's profoundly touching. In fact I have decided there are only two Bowie songs more touching!
2 - FIVE YEARS
"Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing. News had just come over we had five years left to cry in. News guy wept and told us Earth was really dying. Cried so much his face was wet then I knew he was not lying. I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies.I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs. My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare.I had to cram so many things to store everything in there - and all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people - and all the nobody people - and all the somebody people. I never thought I'd need so many people. A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children. If the black hadn't a-pulled her off I think she would have killed them. A soldier with a broken arm fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac. A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest and a queer threw up at the sight of that. I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour drinking milk shakes cold and long, smiling and waving and looking so fine. Don't think you knew you were in this song - and it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor - and I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there. Your face, your race, the way that you talk. I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk. We've got five years, stuck on my eyes. Five years, what a surprise. We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot. Five years, that's all we've got. We've got five years, what a surprise. Five years, stuck on my eyes. We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot. Five years, that's all we've got. We've got five years, stuck on my eyes. Five years, what a surprise. We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot. Five years, that's all we've got. We've got five years, what a surprise. Five years, stuck on my eyes. We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot. Five years, that's all we've got. Five years. Five years. Five years. Five years"
"My brain hurts like a warehouse" - that's my WhatsApp bio!
But it's only one of many many great lines that all contribute to a whole far greater than its parts in this vision of that most Bowiesque of dystopian apocalyptica. Our seventh, and final, choice from the Ziggy LP is the opening track from that album and it's been covered by The Polyphonic Spree, Angel Olsen, Guided by Voices, and no lesser man than Fish from Marillion (on an album in which he also covers Apeman by The Kinks and Jeepster by T.Rex).
The lustrum of the title, Bowie claimed, was down to a dream in which his deceased father told him never to fly again and that he'd die in five years. The 'market square' mentioned in the song is that of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire where David debuted both this album and Hunky Dory.
I love this footage, I love the way Bowie enunciates certain words and phrases like "waving and smiling", "boys", and "toys" and I love lines like "it was cold and rained so I felt like an actor", "I kiss you, you're beautiful. I want you to walk", and, of course "my brain hurts like a warehouse". Put simply, I love absolutely everything about this song. What could be better?
Extinction Rebellion, according to Wikipedia, have taken to using the track at their demonstrations so it lives on even if David doesn't, even if the planet doesn't perhaps!
1 - QUICKSAND
This won't be the last from that era, of that you can be sure, but it is probably the most twee thing you'll find on the list. Jumping in puddles, catching butterflies, and joining the May Day parade. Sounds like a brainstorm session for the creative team of Peppa Pig.
98. ART DECADE
Turn the lights off. Lie down. Let it wash over you.
97. SCARY MONSTERS (AND SUPER CREEPS)
Slightly (massively) overshadowed by the other two singles on the album of the same name, Ashes to Ashes and Fashion, this, nonetheless, is a fun piece of ramalama horror schlock action. Wikipedia makes comparisons with Joy Division's She's Lost Control and Iggy Pop's albums from about a lustrum earlier. Robert Fripp's on form on this track which comes from an album that suffered by coming out after the Berlin period and before Let's Dance.
"When I looked in her eyes they were blue but nobody home"
96. WIN
First track up from '75's Young Americans LP sees David singing about hoping he's crazy, smiles spreading thin, and how "it ain't over". It's a sultry 'number' so it gives our hero some chance to show off his pipes - but, to be honest, he can manage that over the most mundane of tunes. Which, harsher critics than I, may say this is!
95. AFRICAN NIGHT FLIGHT
"Getting in mood for a Mombassa night flight. Pushing my luck, gonna fly like a mad thing. Bare strip takeoff skimming over rhino. Born in slumber less than peace".
Er, beg your pardon? First track up from 1979's Lodger is this curio that sounds like Bowie and Eno falling down a baroque staircase and spilling all of Eno's 'oblique strategies' cards as they go.
Apparently it's inspired by a trip to Kenya that Bowie took with his son Zowie (now better known as the film director Duncan Jones) and is considered a forerunner to the popularity of world, and fusion, musics. It's a fairly crude, if effective, piece that sometimes steers a bit close to exoticisation while, at the same time, sounding like a song a father's written for their child - which it is! So there!
"Over the bushland over the trees, wise like orang-utan that was me".
94. DJ
"One more weekend of lights and evening faces, fast food, living nostalgia. Humble pie or bitter fruit"?
Like buses, these Lodger tracks. Hot on the heels of African Night Flight comes DJ. A number 29 hit in the UK charts at the time that gives Adrian Belew, seemingly, free rein to rock out on guitar and David sounds like he's having fun too singing about Dan Dare, losing his job, and throwing shade on DJ culture FORTY years ago!
Apparently, Momus covered it on his 2015 album Turpsycore. Although that album did include 18 (eighteen) Bowie covers!
"He used to be my boss and now he is a puppet dancer".
93. THE HEART'S FILTHY LESSON
First track up from the nineties, a decade most would agree was Bowie's least productive in terms of innovation at least.
Sung from the perspective of Detective Nathan Adler (yes, really) this is from 1995's Outside LP - a concept album from a time when the concept of a concept album was almost beyond conception. It later cropped up on the closing titles of David Fincher's film Se7en and became something of an unlikely live favourite.
"Who's been wearing Miranda's clothes"?
92. TEENAGE WILDLIFE
"How come you only want tomorrow with its promise of something hard to do"?
Second track from Scary Monsters is this near seven minute long tune in which, we're informed by no lesser source than Wikipedia (I'll do some of my own observations later in this list - promise), the Master of Reinvention has a pop at "new wave boys" and ugly teenage millionaires in "brand new drag".
It's believed he had Gary Numan in his sights for the crime of repetition (which is a bit cheeky as this does sound a tiny bit like "Heroes"). Boy George claimed the line "as ugly as a teenage millionaire" was his all time favourite lyric and Bowie, according to an unreliable source, said he was trying to sing like Ronnie Spector on this!
""Well, David, what shall I do? They wait for me in the hallway" I'll say, "Don't ask me, I don't know any hallways" But they move in numbers and they've got me in a corner".
Later covered by Ash.
91. NEUKOLLN
First track up from 77's 'Heroes' sees Bowie & Eno collaborating on a moody, ominous sounding ambient instrumental named for a district in Berlin and supposed to be reflecting the sound (and rootlessness) of that area's large Turkish population.
Described in the NME thus:- "a mood piece: the Cold War viewed through a bubble of blood or Harry Lime's last thoughts as he dies in the sewer in The Third Man".
A touch heavy on the 'skronking' sax - but magnificent nonetheless.
90. LOOK BACK IN ANGER
""You know who I am, " he said. The speaker was an angel. He coughed and shook his crumpled wings. Closed his eyes and moved his lips. "It's time we should be going"".
Bowie with Eno AGAIN! This is our third track from 79's Lodger and features a guitar solo from Carlos Alomar. Research informs me it polarises Bowie fans.
89. HANG ON TO YOURSELF
"We move like tigers on Vaseline"
The first track up from '72's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (SPOILER ALERT:It won't be the last ;-)). It actually appeared a year earlier as a single by David's band Arnold Corns (named after Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne), a band he formed in Dulwich College!
The riff both looks backwards to rock'n'roll (Eddie Cochran) and forward to punk (The Ramones) while, at the same time, being firmly of the glam rock movement. Bowie would go on to do this kind of thing much better - as we'll discover further down the list (yeah, like you don't already know).
Was covered by both Guns'n'Roses rhythm guitarist Gilby Clarke and Athens, Georgia psychedelic oddballs Of Montreal
"She's a funky thigh collector laying on electric dreams"
88. BLACK COUNTRY ROCK
Debut appearance for a track on Dave's 3rd LP - The Man Who Sold The World. This has a got of lot of Tyrannosaurus Rex about it.
"Some say the view is crazy but you may adopt another point of view. So if it's much too hazy you can leave my friend and me with fond adieu".
87. FANTASTIC VOYAGE
"In the event that this fantastic voyage should turn to erosion and we never get old. Remember it's true, dignity is valuable but our lives are valuable too".
Blimey, fourth track from Lodger already. How many more can be left?
Despite being released in 1979 it was not performed live until 2003. The elegiac tone is an odd fit with lyrics about "depression", "fatherless scum", and "this criminal world". Like 6/10 songs on Lodger it's a co-write with Eno who so far in this list appears to have been Bowie's most regular co-pilot. Will that change?
86. LETTER TO HERMIONE
"The hand that wrote this letter sweeps the pillow clean so rest your head and read a treasured dream. I care for no one else but you, I tear my soul to cease the pain, I think maybe you feel the same. What can we do? I'm not quite sure what we're supposed to do so I've been writing just for you".
Our first offering from Bowie's 2nd album sees our young hero either pining, or wishing a fond adieu, to his former girlfriend, the excellently named Hermione Farthingale.
It's a frail, tender little thing - hardly recognisable as the work of the gender bending behemoth that dominated the next decade like an alien of rock. It's nice to know we were all young and in love once.
"Something tells me that you hide when all the world is warm and tired. You cry a little in the dark. Well so do I. I'm not quite sure what you're supposed to say but I can see it's not okay".
85. UP THE HILL BACKWARDS
Third track from Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). It's said to be a wry, and pretty cryptic, piece about press coverage of Dave's divorce from Angie. Its chanted lyrics and Robert Fripp's off-kilter guitar work make it an odd choice for a single which is perhaps why, when released as a single in March 1981, it only reached number 32. Then again, the charts were a tough place back in the early eighties.
"The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom and the possibilities it seems to offer".
84. SONS OF THE SILENT AGE
"Sons of the silent age pace their rooms like a cell's dimensions, rise for a year or two then make war. search through their one inch thoughts then decide it couldn't be done".
2nd track in the 100 from "Heroes". A song, of which, Bowie's biographer David Buckley remarked upon its "doomy sax-driven verses set incongruously aside cheesy choruses". It certainly gives the Dame's vocal chords a good work out and appears to be about several of those old perennials:- isolation, the will to power, and creation of a rich internal life.
"Baby, I'll never let you go".
83. CYGNET COMMITTEE
"So much has gone and little is new and as the sparrow sings dawn chorus for someone else to hear The Thinker sits alone growing older...and so bitter".
Nine minutes of psychedelic folk about sunrise streams, tranquility, crying rages, business cesspools, and desolation rows. It's not just Dylan who gets a nod either. There's a shout out to the MC5's 'Kick Out the Jams' as well.
It's the second inclusion from his second album on this hundred song list and it's about Bowie's disillusionment with the hippy scene. He wrote it while living in Beckenham with this then girlfriend (and future wife) Angie Barnett.
"We want to live"
"I want to live"
"Live"
81. JOE THE LION
Fripp's back on this tribute to performance artist Chris Burden ("Nail me to my car and I'll tell you who you are"), the third track I've chosen from 77's "Heroes".
"You get up and sleep, the wind blows on your check, the day laughs in your face. Guess you'll buy a gun, you'll buy it secondhand, you'll get up and sleep".
80. CAT PEOPLE (PUTTING OUT FIRE)
"Feel my blood enraged. It's just the fear of losing you. Don't you know my name? You've been so long".
The title song of Paul Schrader's 'erotic horror' Cat People starring Natassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell and a co-write with no less a man than Giorgio Moroder. Yet it's not the disco banger you'd expect and more an exercise in transatlantic goth-rock.
The song re-emerged in '83 on Let's Dance and becomes the first track from that album on this list. The Let's Dance version featured a pretty starry band (Nile Rodgers on rhythm guitar and Stevie Ray Vaughan on lead) and the song has since cropped up on Quentin Tarantino's 2007 film Inglourious Basterds and in the US version of The Office. It reached number one in Sweden, New Zealand, and Norway and Sharleen Spiteri did a cover version of it - if that's your kind of thing.
"See these tears so blue. An ageless heart that can never mend. These tears can never dry. A judgment made can never bend".
79. THE STARS (ARE OUT TONIGHT)
"Stars are never sleeping. Dead ones and the living".
First track from 2013's The Next Day, Bowie's penultimate LP. His first album for a decade and generally considered something of a return to form. Special mention to Gail Ann Dorsey as this is her first appearance in the big one hundred.
"They burn you with their radiant smiles. Trap you with their beautiful eyes. They’re broke and shamed or drunk or scared but I hope they live forever".
78. WORD ON A WING
We've not had anything from Station to Station yet!
Consider that no longer this case. This is a magnificent vocal performance and a wonderful touching song that could surely melt the steeliest of hearts.
Which is rather surprising as Bowie himself admits to writing in a state of cocaine addled despair while filming The Man Who Fell To Earth. Wikipedia describes it as "blue-eyed soul" which has never been one of my favourite genre descriptors but I suppose it sums up this song of existential questing and facing up to one's reality in a mirror you'd normally use to chop a line out on.
"In this age of grand illusion you walked into my life out of my dreams. I don't need another change still you forced your way into my scheme of things".
"Sweet name, you're born once again for me".
77. WHAT IN THE WORLD
"You're just a little girl with grey eyes. Never mind, say something, wait until the crowd cries".
Second song from Low and like everything from the album you have to give Eno and producer Tony Visconti as much credit as Bowie himself. Iggy Pop's chipping in on backing vocals here. I can't face listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers cover version of this. There's only so much research a man is prepared to undergo!
76. THIS IS NOT AMERICA
"A little piece of you, the little peace in me will die for this is not America".
This is Dave doing it in the year 2000 but it actually came out on the soundtrack to John Schlesinger's The Falcon and the Snowman where Bowie worked with Pat Metheny back in 1985. I remember this being in the charts at that time. It reached number 14.
"There was a time. A wind that blew so young"
"Snowmen melting from the inside".
75. THE WIDTH OF A CIRCLE
First track up from '75's Young Americans LP sees David singing about hoping he's crazy, smiles spreading thin, and how "it ain't over". It's a sultry 'number' so it gives our hero some chance to show off his pipes - but, to be honest, he can manage that over the most mundane of tunes. Which, harsher critics than I, may say this is!
95. AFRICAN NIGHT FLIGHT
"Getting in mood for a Mombassa night flight. Pushing my luck, gonna fly like a mad thing. Bare strip takeoff skimming over rhino. Born in slumber less than peace".
Er, beg your pardon? First track up from 1979's Lodger is this curio that sounds like Bowie and Eno falling down a baroque staircase and spilling all of Eno's 'oblique strategies' cards as they go.
Apparently it's inspired by a trip to Kenya that Bowie took with his son Zowie (now better known as the film director Duncan Jones) and is considered a forerunner to the popularity of world, and fusion, musics. It's a fairly crude, if effective, piece that sometimes steers a bit close to exoticisation while, at the same time, sounding like a song a father's written for their child - which it is! So there!
"Over the bushland over the trees, wise like orang-utan that was me".
"One more weekend of lights and evening faces, fast food, living nostalgia. Humble pie or bitter fruit"?
Like buses, these Lodger tracks. Hot on the heels of African Night Flight comes DJ. A number 29 hit in the UK charts at the time that gives Adrian Belew, seemingly, free rein to rock out on guitar and David sounds like he's having fun too singing about Dan Dare, losing his job, and throwing shade on DJ culture FORTY years ago!
Apparently, Momus covered it on his 2015 album Turpsycore. Although that album did include 18 (eighteen) Bowie covers!
"He used to be my boss and now he is a puppet dancer".
93. THE HEART'S FILTHY LESSON
First track up from the nineties, a decade most would agree was Bowie's least productive in terms of innovation at least.
Sung from the perspective of Detective Nathan Adler (yes, really) this is from 1995's Outside LP - a concept album from a time when the concept of a concept album was almost beyond conception. It later cropped up on the closing titles of David Fincher's film Se7en and became something of an unlikely live favourite.
"Who's been wearing Miranda's clothes"?
"How come you only want tomorrow with its promise of something hard to do"?
Second track from Scary Monsters is this near seven minute long tune in which, we're informed by no lesser source than Wikipedia (I'll do some of my own observations later in this list - promise), the Master of Reinvention has a pop at "new wave boys" and ugly teenage millionaires in "brand new drag".
It's believed he had Gary Numan in his sights for the crime of repetition (which is a bit cheeky as this does sound a tiny bit like "Heroes"). Boy George claimed the line "as ugly as a teenage millionaire" was his all time favourite lyric and Bowie, according to an unreliable source, said he was trying to sing like Ronnie Spector on this!
""Well, David, what shall I do? They wait for me in the hallway" I'll say, "Don't ask me, I don't know any hallways" But they move in numbers and they've got me in a corner".
Later covered by Ash.
91. NEUKOLLN
First track up from 77's 'Heroes' sees Bowie & Eno collaborating on a moody, ominous sounding ambient instrumental named for a district in Berlin and supposed to be reflecting the sound (and rootlessness) of that area's large Turkish population.
Described in the NME thus:- "a mood piece: the Cold War viewed through a bubble of blood or Harry Lime's last thoughts as he dies in the sewer in The Third Man".
A touch heavy on the 'skronking' sax - but magnificent nonetheless.
""You know who I am, " he said. The speaker was an angel. He coughed and shook his crumpled wings. Closed his eyes and moved his lips. "It's time we should be going"".
Bowie with Eno AGAIN! This is our third track from 79's Lodger and features a guitar solo from Carlos Alomar. Research informs me it polarises Bowie fans.
89. HANG ON TO YOURSELF
"We move like tigers on Vaseline"
The first track up from '72's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (SPOILER ALERT:It won't be the last ;-)). It actually appeared a year earlier as a single by David's band Arnold Corns (named after Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne), a band he formed in Dulwich College!
The riff both looks backwards to rock'n'roll (Eddie Cochran) and forward to punk (The Ramones) while, at the same time, being firmly of the glam rock movement. Bowie would go on to do this kind of thing much better - as we'll discover further down the list (yeah, like you don't already know).
Was covered by both Guns'n'Roses rhythm guitarist Gilby Clarke and Athens, Georgia psychedelic oddballs Of Montreal
"She's a funky thigh collector laying on electric dreams"
Debut appearance for a track on Dave's 3rd LP - The Man Who Sold The World. This has a got of lot of Tyrannosaurus Rex about it.
"Some say the view is crazy but you may adopt another point of view. So if it's much too hazy you can leave my friend and me with fond adieu".
87. FANTASTIC VOYAGE
"In the event that this fantastic voyage should turn to erosion and we never get old. Remember it's true, dignity is valuable but our lives are valuable too".
Blimey, fourth track from Lodger already. How many more can be left?
Despite being released in 1979 it was not performed live until 2003. The elegiac tone is an odd fit with lyrics about "depression", "fatherless scum", and "this criminal world". Like 6/10 songs on Lodger it's a co-write with Eno who so far in this list appears to have been Bowie's most regular co-pilot. Will that change?
86. LETTER TO HERMIONE
"The hand that wrote this letter sweeps the pillow clean so rest your head and read a treasured dream. I care for no one else but you, I tear my soul to cease the pain, I think maybe you feel the same. What can we do? I'm not quite sure what we're supposed to do so I've been writing just for you".
Our first offering from Bowie's 2nd album sees our young hero either pining, or wishing a fond adieu, to his former girlfriend, the excellently named Hermione Farthingale.
It's a frail, tender little thing - hardly recognisable as the work of the gender bending behemoth that dominated the next decade like an alien of rock. It's nice to know we were all young and in love once.
"Something tells me that you hide when all the world is warm and tired. You cry a little in the dark. Well so do I. I'm not quite sure what you're supposed to say but I can see it's not okay".
85. UP THE HILL BACKWARDS
Third track from Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). It's said to be a wry, and pretty cryptic, piece about press coverage of Dave's divorce from Angie. Its chanted lyrics and Robert Fripp's off-kilter guitar work make it an odd choice for a single which is perhaps why, when released as a single in March 1981, it only reached number 32. Then again, the charts were a tough place back in the early eighties.
"The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom and the possibilities it seems to offer".
"Sons of the silent age pace their rooms like a cell's dimensions, rise for a year or two then make war. search through their one inch thoughts then decide it couldn't be done".
2nd track in the 100 from "Heroes". A song, of which, Bowie's biographer David Buckley remarked upon its "doomy sax-driven verses set incongruously aside cheesy choruses". It certainly gives the Dame's vocal chords a good work out and appears to be about several of those old perennials:- isolation, the will to power, and creation of a rich internal life.
"Baby, I'll never let you go".
83. CYGNET COMMITTEE
"So much has gone and little is new and as the sparrow sings dawn chorus for someone else to hear The Thinker sits alone growing older...and so bitter".
Nine minutes of psychedelic folk about sunrise streams, tranquility, crying rages, business cesspools, and desolation rows. It's not just Dylan who gets a nod either. There's a shout out to the MC5's 'Kick Out the Jams' as well.
It's the second inclusion from his second album on this hundred song list and it's about Bowie's disillusionment with the hippy scene. He wrote it while living in Beckenham with this then girlfriend (and future wife) Angie Barnett.
"We want to live"
"I want to live"
"Live"
82. ROCK'N'ROLL SUICIDE
"Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth".
The 2nd track up for consideration from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars tells a story about Ziggy from the end of his career (and, appropriately, used to be the last song played live on the Ziggy tour). Ziggy's washed up, he's "too old to lose it, too young to choose it", he's "lived too long", and his head is "all tangled up" but he's "wonderful" and he's "not alone".
Wikipedia suggests Bowie saw the song in the tradition of French chanson and also goes on to mention both Jacquel Brel and Baudelaire. Bowie's not just fun. He's an education too!
81. JOE THE LION
Fripp's back on this tribute to performance artist Chris Burden ("Nail me to my car and I'll tell you who you are"), the third track I've chosen from 77's "Heroes".
"You get up and sleep, the wind blows on your check, the day laughs in your face. Guess you'll buy a gun, you'll buy it secondhand, you'll get up and sleep".
"Feel my blood enraged. It's just the fear of losing you. Don't you know my name? You've been so long".
The title song of Paul Schrader's 'erotic horror' Cat People starring Natassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell and a co-write with no less a man than Giorgio Moroder. Yet it's not the disco banger you'd expect and more an exercise in transatlantic goth-rock.
The song re-emerged in '83 on Let's Dance and becomes the first track from that album on this list. The Let's Dance version featured a pretty starry band (Nile Rodgers on rhythm guitar and Stevie Ray Vaughan on lead) and the song has since cropped up on Quentin Tarantino's 2007 film Inglourious Basterds and in the US version of The Office. It reached number one in Sweden, New Zealand, and Norway and Sharleen Spiteri did a cover version of it - if that's your kind of thing.
"See these tears so blue. An ageless heart that can never mend. These tears can never dry. A judgment made can never bend".
"See these eyes so green. I can stare for a thousand years. Just be still with me. You wouldn't believe what I've been through".
79. THE STARS (ARE OUT TONIGHT)
"Stars are never sleeping. Dead ones and the living".
First track from 2013's The Next Day, Bowie's penultimate LP. His first album for a decade and generally considered something of a return to form. Special mention to Gail Ann Dorsey as this is her first appearance in the big one hundred.
"They burn you with their radiant smiles. Trap you with their beautiful eyes. They’re broke and shamed or drunk or scared but I hope they live forever".
78. WORD ON A WING
We've not had anything from Station to Station yet!
Consider that no longer this case. This is a magnificent vocal performance and a wonderful touching song that could surely melt the steeliest of hearts.
Which is rather surprising as Bowie himself admits to writing in a state of cocaine addled despair while filming The Man Who Fell To Earth. Wikipedia describes it as "blue-eyed soul" which has never been one of my favourite genre descriptors but I suppose it sums up this song of existential questing and facing up to one's reality in a mirror you'd normally use to chop a line out on.
"In this age of grand illusion you walked into my life out of my dreams. I don't need another change still you forced your way into my scheme of things".
"Sweet name, you're born once again for me".
77. WHAT IN THE WORLD
"You're just a little girl with grey eyes. Never mind, say something, wait until the crowd cries".
Second song from Low and like everything from the album you have to give Eno and producer Tony Visconti as much credit as Bowie himself. Iggy Pop's chipping in on backing vocals here. I can't face listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers cover version of this. There's only so much research a man is prepared to undergo!
"A little piece of you, the little peace in me will die for this is not America".
This is Dave doing it in the year 2000 but it actually came out on the soundtrack to John Schlesinger's The Falcon and the Snowman where Bowie worked with Pat Metheny back in 1985. I remember this being in the charts at that time. It reached number 14.
"There was a time. A wind that blew so young"
"Snowmen melting from the inside".
Our second entrant from 1970's The Man Who Sold The World is this rockin', almost metal, number about sleeping monsters, bordellos, burning pits of fear, and the Lebanese nationalist Khalil Gibran.
It's over eight minutes long and features Mick Ronson making a glorious racket on lead guitar, Tony Visconti on bass, and Woody Woodmansey on drums. Something of a classic line up.
74. THE KOOKS
"Will you stay in our lovers' story? If you stay you won't be sorry 'cause we believe in you. Soon you'll grow so take a chance with a couple of kooks hung up on romancing".
One of the nicest, and silliest, songs about fatherhood I think I've ever heard. The Kooks is the first (but surely not the last?) track from 71's Hunky Dory.
Duncan Jones, Bowie's son - who it's about, went on direct Source Code and Moon so the song, nor having a famous rock star father one would presume, did him no harm. Song covered by a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly: Tindersticks, Madness, Kim Wilde, Smashing Pumpkins, and Robbie Williams. Plus, of course, the band The Kooks named themselves are it.
"And if you ever have to go to school remember how they messed up this old fool. Don't pick fights with the bullies or the cads 'cause I'm not much cop at punching other people's dads. And if the homework brings you down then we'll throw it on the fire and take the car downtown".
73. THE SECRET LIFE OF ARABIA
"I was running at the speed of life through morning's thoughts and fantasies. Then I saw your eyes at the cross fade".
Another great, quite OTT, vocal work out on this, our 4th track from "Heroes". Written by Bowie, Eno, and Carlos Alomar. Covered by Nina Hagen and Billy Mackenzie from The Associates.
72. WATCH THAT MAN
Our second track from Aladdin Sane.
Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray accused this song, and others from the album, of being "written too fast, recorded too fast and mixed too fast". Others remarked on similarities to The Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street LP.
Some great lines like "a lemon in a bag played the tiger rag and the bodies on the screen stopped bleeding.Yeah I was shaking like a leaf for I couldn't understand the conversation. Yeah I ran to the street, looking for information" and some nice piano from Mike Garson.
71.TIS A PITY SHE WAS A WHORE
"Man, she punched me like a dude"
First track from 2016's Blackstar features some great squalling sax and takes its name from a play by Jacobean and Caroline dramatist John Ford. Bowie claimed of the song "if Vorticists wrote rock music it might have sounded like this".
"She kept my cock" is quite a line!
70.THERE IS A HAPPY LAND
"There's a special place in the rhubarb fields underneath the leaves. It's a secret place and adults aren't allowed there, Mr. Grownup. Go away, sir".
The second track from Bowie's twee, Anthony Newley inspired, debut features lyrics about chicken pox, flying kites, learning to ride your bike, and climbing trees. It ends with Bowie imaging what a six year old scat singer might sound like. Sillier than I remember to be honest!
"Sue, I found your note that you wrote last night. It can't be right. You went with him. Sue, I never dreamed. I'm such a fool. Right from the start you went with that clown".
Our second selection from ★ features an arrangement from Minnesota's Maria Schneider who's also got a co-writing credit along with Paul Bateman and Bob Bhamra. It's quite a skeletal, almost crypto-funk, affair with lyrics about clinics, x-rays, and "endless faith in hopeless deeds".
"Why too dark to speak the words?".
"This chaos is killing me".
The nineties are unlikely to be the most prominently featured decade in this list but here's a track from 95's Outside, a co-write with Eno that saw a remix from The Pet Shop Boys and one he's performed with both Nine Inch Nails and The Foo Fighters.
It's the first from Outside so far - but is it the only?
"Do you like girls or boys? It's confusing these days".
67. WEEPING WALL
Third track from Low in the top 100 has been, incorrectly, described as 'dreary' somewhere on the Internet. 'Atmospheric' would be more apt. DB tries to evoke the misery of the Berlin Wall (and succeeds fairly well I'd say) by playing all the instruments himself (including a vibraphone and a chamberlin) and, according to Wikipedia, riffing on the traditional ballad Scarborough Fair
66. MAID OF BOND STREET
"This girl is made of loneliness. A broken heart for the boy that she once knew doesn't want to know her any more".
My 3rd selection from Bowie's '67 debut is that chirpy, yet sad, tale of hailing cabs, lunches with executives, jealousy, envy, and the cutting room floor. Darker than it sounds.
"This girl is a lonely girl. Takes the train from Paddington to Oxford Circus, buys the Daily News
but passengers don't smile at her, don't smile at her".
65. THE NEXT DAY
"First they give you everything that you want then they take back everything that you have. They live upon their feet and they die upon their knees. They can work with Satan while they dress like the saints. They know God exists for the devil told them so. They scream my name aloud down into the well below".
Title track, and the second selection, from 2013's The Next Day is a tale of whores, gormless and braying crowds, women dressed as men, and soggy paper bodies. Some got upset at its perceived mocking of Christianity. They ought to get out more.
Features three very noisy guitars. Bowie himself, David Torn (jazz fusion session dude from NY state), and Gerry Leonard who's played with Suzanne Vega and Rufus Wainwright.
"Here I am not quite dying. My body left to rot in a hollow tree. Its branches throwing shadow on the gallows for me".
64. A NEW CAREER IN A NEW TOWN
Fourth song from Low and third instrumental from that album.
It's a bit more upbeat than the other two so far. In reality the second, instrumental, side of Low needs to be listened to in its entirety rather than as individual pieces - but that's not the protocol with this list!
63. MEMORY OF A FREE FESTIVAL
"The children of the summer's end gathered in the dampened grass. We played our songs and felt the London sky resting on our hands. It was God's land. It was ragged and naive. It was heaven".
The third track from DB's second album is, as its title suggests, dripping with wishy-washy lyrics and hippy imagery. Ecstasy, white balloons, and sun machines all crop up along with the ol' ivory vibrant cloud.
It's an homage to a free festival held at Croydon Road Recreation Ground in Beckenham in August 1969 and features Bowie playing a kiddies toy organ from Woolworths. At times it sounds like it could go off in an Incredible String Band direction which is a massive plus point for me.
"We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes and saw machines of every shape and size. We talked with tall Venusians passing through and Peter tried to climb aboard but the captain shook his head and away they soared. Climbing through the ivory vibrant cloud".
"I kissed a lot of people that day".
62. RUBBER BAND
"In 1910 I was so handsome and so strong. My moustache was stiffly waxed and one foot long and I loved a girl while you played teatime tunes".
FOURTH song from Bowie's debut won't delight the purists but it's an era I have a great affection for. When the single was released in December '66 few others did. It flopped. Which wouldn't have been a surprise. Everything Bowie had ever released had flopped at that point.
"I hope you break your baton".
61. SUBTERRANEANS
Our 5th track from Low and it's the fourth, and thus final, choice from that album's almost completely instrumental second side. This track does have some very brief, very hard to decipher lyrics that come in just before the fourth minute of the song.
60. LADY GRINNING SOUL
"She'll come, she'll go, she'll lay belief on you. Skin sweet with musky odour".
The third selection from Aladdin Sane sees Bowie in glam balladeer mode talking about clothes strewn around the floor, beetle cars, and "the fullness of her breast".
Has been compared to a James Bond theme and heavily features Mike Garson's piano. Garson described his playing as "French with a little Franz Liszt thrown in". Covered by Momus and Anna Calvi.
59 - THE BEWLAY BROTHERS
"And so the story goes they wore the clothes, they said the things to make it seem improbable.
Whale of a lie like they hope it was".
The second offering from Hunky Dory has been described as "probably Bowie's most densest and impenetrable song" and also, by the author himself, as having lyrics that "make absolutely no sense".
So that's why I can't really work out what he's going on about with his "wings that bark", "flashing teeth of brass", and "crutch-hungry dark". That's fine. A bit of nonsense in pop music is always welcome. Covered by Elbow, Momus (as usual), and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (urgh)!
So that's why I can't really work out what he's going on about with his "wings that bark", "flashing teeth of brass", and "crutch-hungry dark". That's fine. A bit of nonsense in pop music is always welcome. Covered by Elbow, Momus (as usual), and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (urgh)!
"He's chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature".
58 - LAZARUS
"Look up here, I'm in heaven. I've got scars that can't be seen. I've got drama, can't be stolen. Everybody knows me now".
Our third track from Blackstar was its lead single with that video. It's imbued with a creeping sense of dread which seems only too appropriate now we know what was in David's mind when he wrote and recorded it.
The last Bowie single released during his lifetime and was his first top 40 hit in the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA in more than twenty-eight years. It's a fitting epitaph to such a majestic career. I don't think you'll get much argument about that.
"By the time I got to New York I was living like a king. Then I used up all my money. I was looking for your ass".
"You know, I'll be free just like that bluebird".
57 - JOIN THE GANG
From the sublime to the ridiculous.
From 2015 back to 1967 and my FIFTH selection from DB's debut album of jaunty tunes for children old and young.
This one tells of sitar playing Johnny who's an existentialist, Molly with an acid full of soul, and Arthur the singer who drinks two bottles just before he goes on stage. It was quite a journey from this to Lazarus!
56 - UNDER PRESSURE
For the most part I've steered away from collaborations. No sitting next to Bing Crosby and his pipe crooning Little Drummer Boy and definitely no Dancing in the Street with Mick Jagger.
This is my one concession in the whole list (though you could say everything Bowie ever released was in essence a collaboration) and you could possibly make a case for it being more a Queen song than a Bowie one as even David's most showy vocals could not hope to hit the operatic heights that Mercury does.
Thankfully. It was Queen's 2nd number one hit (after Bohemian Rhapsody) and Bowie's third, following Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes. Rolling Stone voted it the second best collaboration of all time behind, er, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's One Sweet Day but ahead of Run DMC & Aerosmith's Walk This Way. Really, there's no accounting for taste.
55 - V2-SCHNEIDER
The fifth track from "Heroes" on her list is a tribute to Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider. Kraftwerk were a big influence on Bowie at the time though, and I can't be certain, it seems unlikely they ever incorporated a saxophone into their sound - as he does here. Covered by Philip Glass and used on the soundtrack of Christiane F.
54 - THE LAUGHING GNOME
"Well I gave him roasted toadstool and a glass of dandelion wine (burp, pardon). Then I put him on a train to Eastbourne, carried his bag, and gave him a fag".
If ever I'm gonna get some shit during this top 100 it's now. This ludicrous song would be a curio if it was recorded by a one hit wonder but the fact Bowie released it - AND had a hit with it makes the story even more bizarre. In the nineties Bowie went on tour and asked fans to vote for what songs he'd play live. The NME launched a campaign to get him to play this but I'm pretty sure he never did.
Better than Tin Machine though. Despite all the jokes about "the Gnome Office", looking like a "Rolling Gnome", and "the London School of Eco-gnome-ics". The gnome voice is Gus Dudgeon, producer of many of Elton John's biggest hits!
"'Ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee I'm a laughing gnome and you can't catch me' said the laughing gnome"!
53 - BLUE JEAN
"Blue Jean, she got a camouflaged face and no money. Remember they always let you down when you need 'em".
First song up from 84's Tonight LP (will there be any more? It was not a well received album, coming after the huge hit Let's Dance, and even Bowie himself went on to express dissatisfaction with it).
Despite this it reached the top 10 in both the UK (6) and the US (8). Then again Agadoo by Black Lace was the sixth best selling UK single of 1984. Bowie also later said of the song that it's "a piece of sexist rock 'n roll. It's about picking up birds. It's not very cerebral, that piece". Decent tune though.
"One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter. One day I'm gonna get that faculty together. Remember that everybody has to wait in line for Blue Jean".
52 - SELL ME A COAT
"A winter's day, a bitter snowflake on my face. My summer girl takes little backward steps away. Jack Frost took her hand and left me. Jack Frost ain't so cool".
SIXTH selection from the debut album features Dave singing and la la la'ing about coats with buttons of silver and little patch pockets. Memories of sitting in Shep's room at Mrs Uriarte's house with him and Bugsy giggling away to this before putting on a blast of Hot Chocolate and heading down The Fox & Hounds in Tadley to try to get rid of a Midway Still LP, only to find the cigarette machine doubled up as a lifeboat!
"See my eyes, my window pane. See my tears like gentle rain. That's the memory of a summer day".
I'm not sure if this counts as one, two, or three songs but when I borrowed the cassette from Forest Hill library not long afer moving to London in 1996 it was listed as if all one song and, in my mind, it always has been - and probably always will be.
Remarkably, it's the first song on the list from 74's Diamond Dogs. It's probably not too much of a spoiler to reveal it won't be the last.
Wikipedia informs me that this contains the lowest note Bowie had ever recorded in the studio (C2) until Heathen's I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spacecraft in 2002! The Candidate part has namechecks for Charlie Manson and Cassius Clay and, elsewhere, there's references to jumping in the river holding hands, bars on the end of the street, "poisonous people", and "bullet proof faces". It's a long one too. Nine minutes in total.
50 - SPEED OF LIFE
Sixth track from Low and it's the one that introduces that wonderful album. It sets the scene about as perfectly as anything could. I don't need to say any more about this one.
49 - TVC-15
Station to Station is surely the most under rated Bowie album and there will, SPOILER ALERT, be more tracks from it soon.
Couldn't work out how to write about this and told my friend Darren so. Told him it was about Iggy Pop doing so much acid he thought the telly was eating his girlfriend and Mr Noire correctly pointed out that's a good enough story - and it is. It's a tune too.
48 - FASHION
"There's a brand new dance but I don't know its name that people from bad homes do again and again. It's big and it's bland, full of tension and fear. They do it over there but we don't do it here".
It's hotting up now. This 1980 single was ranked as the eighth best of the year by NME (the top seven were Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division), Going Underground (The Jam), Mirror in the Bathroom (The Beat), Atmosphere (JD again), Your Cassette pet (Bow Wow Wow), and Private Life (Grace Jones). Oh, and another Bowie single which we'll meet up with later.
Robert Fripp gets to do his cubist funk thing here, it reached number 5 in the UK charts and was covered by Frank Black, The Dandy Warhols, Glamma Kid whose late nineties dancehall version is quite a thing, and the charmingly named Die Lady Di!
"We are the goon squad and we're coming to town. Beep-beep. Beep-beep ".
47 - STAY
"This week dragged past me so slowly, the days fell on their knees. Maybe I'll take something to help me. Hope someone takes after me. I guess there's always some change in the weather. This time I know we could get it together".
The Station to Station tracks are coming like buses now! This one sees Earl Slick knocking out a funky riff as Bowie lets fly with a pretty dramatic vocal about a 'heartwrecker'. For such a handsome chap, he does seem to get dumped on a lot.
46 - DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
"Let me put my arms around your head. Gee, it's hot, let's go to bed".
Who doesn't like a bit of doo-wop? Fourth track from Aladdin Sane and it's only in researching this list I found out that the lyrics are about inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic future watching porn films because they've forgotten how to make love! Not your standard doo-wop subject matter!
Also it's unlikely any other song, doo-wop or any other genre, features namechecks for both Swiss psychiatrist (and author of Modern Man in Search of a Soul) Carl Jung and Neasden model and cultural icon Twiggy! Mott the Hoople turned it down but it's been covered by Def Leppard and Morrissey, two acts best avoided these days.
"Try to get it on like once before when people stared in Jagger's eyes and scored like the video films we saw".
45 - UNCLE ARTHUR
"Uncle Arthur likes his mommy. Uncle Arthur still reads comics. Uncle Arthur follows Batman".
Shocking to some but this is the SEVENTH track of Bowie's jaunty debut - and it's not even the last!
"Round and round goes Arthur's head, hasn't eaten well for days. Little
Sally may be lovely but cooking leaves her in a maze. Uncle Arthur
packed his bags and fled. Back to mother, all's forgiven, serving in the
family shop, he gets his pocket money, he's well fed".
44 - ALADDIN SANE (1913-1938-197?)
"Who'll love Aladdin Sane? Millions weep a fountain, just in case of sunrise".
Fifth up from Aladdin Sane is the title song (of sorts). Inspired by Bowie's half-brother Terry's schizophrenia, the years in brackets are the years before each World War started. Bowie believed that the 1970s, at some point, would see the start of World War III!
Musically, it's worth noting Mike Garson's eccentric piano solo which the NME likened to work of New York free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor. The 1970s NME writers knew what free jazz was!
"Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise"!
43 - THE PRETTIEST STAR
Sixth from Aladdin Sane is a song Bowie wrote for his wife to be, Angela. In, apparently, the Greek hassapiko dance style as a tribute to Angie's Cypriot roots! Marc Bolan played guitar on the original but Mick Ronson was on axe duty by the time it turned up on the Aladdin Sane album. Covered by Ian McCulloch and Jad Fair!
"One day, though it might as well be someday, you and I will rise up all the way. All because of what you are:- the prettiest star".
42 - LITTLE WONDER
"Stinky weather, fat shaky hands, dopey morning doc, grumpy gnomes".
First (and only?) track from 97's Earthling sees Bowie briefly, and with some panache I thought, flirt with drum'n'bass. Could, perhaps, be the only song that features the Amen break AND namechecks all seven dwarves!
"Mars happy nation sit on my karma. Dame meditation take me away".
41 - CHINA GIRL
"I could escape this feeling with my China girl. I feel a wreck without my, little China girl. I hear her heart beating loud as thunder".
Our second selection from Let's Dance, a co-write with Iggy Pop, originally came out on Iggy's 1977 Idiot LP. But Bowie took it to number two during possibly his greatest chart run of hits in the UK ever.
Produced by Nile Rodgers, who manages to make a song with lyrics about "visions of swastikas" and feeling "tragic like Marlon Brando" into something of an odd orientalist disco pop classic.
40 - JOHN, I'M ONLY DANCING
"Well, Annie's pretty neat, she always eats her meat. Joe is awful strong, bet your life he's putting us on".
Bowie's big gay, or at least bi, anthem is a cracking tune and he recorded it twice. In '74 and again in '79 although it never appeared on any offical album. just compilations etc;
Covered by The Polecats and The Chameleons amongst others.
39 - CHANGES
"Still don't know what I was waitin' for and my time was runnin' wild. A million dead end streets and
every time I thought I'd got it made it seemed the taste was not so sweet. So I turned myself to face me but I've never caught a glimpse. How the others must see the faker. I'm much too fast to take that test".
Third choice from Hunky Dory is this deathless classic that's described on Wikipedia, reasonably enough, as "a manifesto for his chameleonic personality". Covered by Seu Jorge, Bananarama, The Puppini Sisters, and Lindsay Lohan! Oh, and Bowie did backing vocals for Butterfly Boucher's 2004 version which appeared on the Shrek 2 soundtrack!
"I watch the ripples change their size but never leave the stream of warm impermanence".
"Strange fascinations fascinate me".
38 - WHERE ARE WE NOW?
The 2nd track from The Next Day LP was released on Bowie's 66th birthday and it seemed, to most observers, to have come out of nowhere.
Widely, and correctly, considered a final return to form it reached number six in the UK singles chart and was his biggest hit for over twenty-six years. A slow, mournful, elegiac vibe permeates the entire song.
"Had to get the train from Potsdamer Platz. You never knew that. That I could do that. Just walking the dead".
"As long as there's sun. As long as there's sun. As long as there's rain. As long as there's rain. As long as there's fire. As long as there's fire. As long as there's me. As long as there's you".
37 - FAME
"Fame makes a man take things over. Fame lets him loose, hard to swallow. Fame puts you there where things are hollow. Fame, it's not your brain, it's just the flame that burns your change to keep you insane".
Only our second track from the Young Americans LP (outrage, I imagine some of you saying). A co-write with Carlos Alomar and some chap called John Lennon. It's something of a masterclass in pared down funk rock and befitting its classic status has been covered by a fairly lengthy list of artists including The Eurythmics, Pearl Jam, Jay-Z, Smashing Pumpkins, James Brown, Duran Duran, and George Michael.
36 - LOVE YOU 'TIL TUESDAY
"Who's that hiding in the apple tree, clinging to a branch? Don't be afraid it's only me, hoping for a little romance".
The eighth track on Bowie's debut and the purists are about to explode! I've stated my reasons for including these tracks earlier and I'm sticking by them,
This one actually picked up praise at the time from Record Mirror and Melody Maker whose singles that week were being reviewed by Syd Barrett who called it "very chirpy"!
"Well, I might stretch it till Wednesday".
"I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa coming for you. I'm the space invader, I'll be a rock 'n' rollin' bitch for you. Keep your mouth shut, you're squawking like a pink monkey bird and I'm busting up my brains for the words".
"The church of man, love, is such a holy place to be". Moving away from 'very chirpy' to full on glam rock'n'roll, it's our third track from Ziggy Stardust (it's not much of a spoiler to say it won't be the last) and was first released by David's band, Arnold Corns. Who were named after the Pink Floyd song Arnold Layne.
Ronson's guitar sounds almost on fire at some points. Or beamed in from some alternate dimension. It's no wonder this one, like so many others, proved popular to cover with versions by 10,000 Maniacs, Beth Ditto, The Chameleons, LA Guns, and Terrorvision.
"Keep your electric eye on me babe. Put your ray gun to my head. Press your space face close to mine, love. Freak out in a moonage daydream. Oh yeah".
They come like buses, these Ziggy tracks, don't they?
Influenced by Little Richard (as all great music is) and influencing most things that came after.
"Wham, bam, thank you mam" - is that where that started?
33 - OH! YOU PRETTY THINGS
"Wake up you sleepy head, put on some clothes, shake up your bed. Put another log on the fire for me. I've made some breakfast and coffee. Look out my window and what do I see:- a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me. All the nightmares came today and it looks as though they're here to stay".
Hunky Dory track number four nods towards Aleister Crowley and Nietzsche (very much the main men in the 1971 Bowieverse) but was, alarmingly, originally recorded by Peter Noone from Herman's Hermits. His version is available on request.
"You gotta make way for the homo superior"!
32 -ALL THE YOUNG DUDES
"Well, Billy rapped all night about his suicide. How he'd kick it in the head when he was twenty-five. Speed jive, don't want to stay alive when you're twenty-five, and Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks & Sparks, and Freddy's got spots from ripping off the stars from his face. Funky little boat race. Television man is crazy saying we're juvenile delinquent wrecks. Oh, man, I need TV when I've got T.Rex. Oh brother, you guessed I'm a dude".
This one is better known by, and better served by, Mott the Hoople's version but Bowie wrote it and has played it live since the Ziggy Stardust tour so I think it warrants a place on the list.
This song has variously been viewed as a glam antidote to the hippy
idealism of All You Need Is Love, a typical example of Bowie dancing
darkly in the face of the impending apocalypse, and, according to Lou
Reed, a big gay anthem. You choose!
"My brother's back at home with his Beatles and his Stones. We never got it off on that revolution stuff. What a drag, too many snags. Now I've drunk a lot of wine and I'm feeling fine"
"My brother's back at home with his Beatles and his Stones. We never got it off on that revolution stuff. What a drag, too many snags. Now I've drunk a lot of wine and I'm feeling fine"
31 - REBEL REBEL
"Hot tramp, I love you so!"
Only our second cut from 74's Diamond Dogs and this one is said to be Bowie's most covered track. Take a deep breath and consider versions by such disparate artists as Manic Street Preachers, Dead or Alive, Bryan Adams, Seu Jorge, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Iggy Pop and Lenny Kravitz, The Smashing Pumpkins, Duran Duran, and The Bay City Rollers!
It's seen as the last single Bowie released in the glam-rock style and
also something of a proto-punk tune but, hey, you probably know it
already and have your own opinion on it. I'm always happy to hear that
opinion. Also worth noting here that my friend Darren reminded me that Man Utd fans used to sing the words Neville Neville to this tune in celebration of Gary, Phil, and their dad who was actually called Neville Neville!
"You've got your mother in a whirl. She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl. Hey babe, your hair's alright. Hey babe, let's go out tonight".
"You've got your mother in a whirl. She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl. Hey babe, your hair's alright. Hey babe, let's go out tonight".
30 - ZIGGY STARDUST
"Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we were voodoo. The kid was just crass, he was the nazz with God given ass. He took it all too far but boy could he play guitar".
Our fifth track from Ziggy Stardust is the title one. Ziggy was inspired by Vince Taylor, a popular British rock'n'roller who took so much acid he thought he was Jesus Christ.
Though some claim The Legendary Stardust Cowboy to be the source material, perhaps due to the name. I'm pretty sure I heard the Bauhaus cover before I ever heard Bowie's version. It's pretty good too!
"Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind like a leper messiah. When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band".
Though some claim The Legendary Stardust Cowboy to be the source material, perhaps due to the name. I'm pretty sure I heard the Bauhaus cover before I ever heard Bowie's version. It's pretty good too!
"Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind like a leper messiah. When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band".
"Ziggy played guitar".
29 - ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR
My theme tune!
The seventh selection from Low is about constantly making the same mistakes over and over again!
The Jasmine in the song is reported to be Iggy Pop!
28 - GOLDEN YEARS
"Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel. Come get up my baby. Look at that sky, life's begun. Nights are warm and the days are young".
Track #4 from Station to Station was recorded, like everything on that album, during Bowie's cocaine zenith/nadir. Bowie claimed he offered this song up to Elvis who refused it and this Soul Train performance was when he became the second ever white artist (following Elton John!) to appear on the show!
"I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years. Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years".
27 - SPACE ODDITY
"Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Lift off"!
This is probably the first Bowie track I was aware of - even if I didn't know who he was at the time!
Inspired by Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey (and coming out five days before Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon). It became Bowie's first UK hit reaching number five in 1969 but, for years, it looked like it may be an albatross around his neck as he was starting, crazily in retrospect, to look like a one hit wonder.
When it was re-released in 1975 it became Bowie's first UK number one hit single.
"Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do".
26 - SOUL LOVE
"Stone love, she kneels before the grave. A brave son, who gave his life to save the slogans that hovers between the headstone and her eyes. For they penetrate her grieving".
Track #6 from Ziggy Stardust and it's time to give a shout out to Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey, the northern powerhouse of a rhythm section. Together with Bowie's initially sinister vocals, his saxophone playing, and the guitar of Mick Ronson this song seems to effortlessly find that sweet spot between funk and glam. Two genres, it has to be said, that Bowie excelled at.
"New love, a boy and girl are talking. New words, that only they can share in. New words, a love so strong it tears their hearts. To sleep through the fleeting hours of morning".
25 - THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD
"We passed upon the stair. We spoke of was and when. Although I wasn't there he said I was his friend. Which came as a surprise. I spoke into his eyes. I thought you died alone a long long time ago".
I'll 'fess up. I actually prefer Nirvana's version of this. They absolutely nail it. A rare example (see also Mott the Hoople) of an act improving a DB song. This was also covered by Lulu, Simple Minds, Midge Ure, Meat Puppets, and John Cougar Mellencamp
"Oh no, not me. We never lost control. You're face to face with the man who sold the world".
24 - BOYS KEEP SWINGING
"When you're a boy you can wear a uniform. When you're a boy other boys check you out. You get a girl. These are your favorite things when you're a boy. Boys. Boys. Boys keep swinging. Boys always work it out"
Fifth track from Lodger employs Eno's Oblique Strategies cards and resulted in guitarist Carlos Alomar playing drums and drummer Dennis Davis playing bass. It results in a weird bit of homoerotic pop and I guess you could consider some of the lyrics problematic but I believe the Goblin King when he says "I do not feel that there is anything remotely glorious about being either male or female. I was merely playing on the idea of the colonization of gender".
"When you're a boy you can buy a home of your own. When you're a boy, learn to drive and everything. You'll get your share when you're a boy".
23 - BLACKSTAR
"In the Villa of Ormen stands a solitary candle at the centre of it all".
"On the day of execution only women kneel and smile".
Fourth choice from Blackstar is the title track. Variously descrived as art rock, jazztronica, or avant-jazz, it was originally over eleven minutes long but iTunes won't post songs over ten minutes in length so Bowie and Tony Visconti edited it down to nine minutes and fifty seven seconds. Like the rest of the album it received huge critical acclaim but that didn't necessarily convert into chart placings!
"How many times does an angel fall? How many people lie instead of talking tall? He trod on sacred ground. He cried loud into the crowd. I'm a Blackstar. I'm a Blackstar. I'm not a gangster".
"Love me, love me, love me, love me, say you do. Let me fly away with you for my love is like the wind - and wild is the wind".
Impossibly romantic. Imagine how it would feel to have somebody write a song like this for you. I think having a love song written for and about you would be the most heart melting thing ever. Nobody's ever done it for me.
It's a very rare example of a song on this list that's not written by Bowie. Wild is the Wind was penned by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington and was originally recorded by Johnny Mathis in 1957 so it's the only cover version in this whole Top 100. I'm not usually a fan of Bowie's covers. Dancing in the Street with Mick Jagger was interesting only as a curio and nobody ever chooses Pin Ups as their favourite Bowie LP.
It's our fifth choice from Station to Station, an album that only has six songs on (will we complete the set? You can probably guess) and sees Bowie deliver an absolutely top class vocal performance despite being coked off his bonce at the time. Song's also been recorded by Nina Simone, George Michael, Barbra Streisand, Randy Crawford, Shirley Bassey, and Clan of Xymox. So if you're ever stuck for a link between Barbra Streisand and Clan of Xymox this is your go to place.
"You touch me. I hear the sound of mandolins. You kiss me with your kiss. My life begins. You're spring to me. All things to me".
21 - LET'S DANCE
"Let's dance. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues. Let's dance to the song they're playing on the radio. Let's sway while colour lights up your face. Let's sway. Sway through the crowd to an empty space".
My, the love songs are flowing now. The third pick from the Let's Dance album is the title track and an absolutely fucking phenomenal hit. I'd go so far as to say that for most people this is the first Bowie song they'd think of. Certainly people of my age who were a little too young to really dig the seventies stuff.
I love how he manages, with Nile Rodgers at the controls, to pretty much invent the concept of the 'sad banger' about thirty years before that term gained any traction. You could dance to this, the title of course instructs you to, but when DB breaks in to "because my love for you would break my heart in two" you'll suddenly find yourself overcome with emotion. Dancing with tears in your eyes for sure.
It's one of the 300 best selling UK singles of all time, it stayed at number one here for three weeks and also topped the charts in Ireland, the USA, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands. All that from a single that was released as a follow up to his duet with Bing Crosby, Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy!
"If you say run I'll run with you and if you say hide we'll hide because my love for you would break my heart in two. If you should fall into my arms and tremble like a flower".
20 - ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS
"I absolutely love you but we're absolute beginners, with eyes completely open but nervous all the same".
Another love song! One from 1986, an era in which Bowie, let's be honest, was pretty much at his creative nadir. This is the exception that proves the rule (for me, at least) although it's not as good as The Jam song of the same name that came a few years prior to it.
Its understated feel stood in stark contrast to the bombastic nature of much eighties pop although the production and saxophone fit in perfectly with the era. It's from Julien Temple's flop film of the same name and made number two in the UK charts. Held off the top spot by Diana Ross's Chain Reaction (now that's a tune). Covered by both Saint Etienne and, er, Carla Bruni!
"As long as we're together the rest can go to hell".
19 - LONDON BOYS
"Bright lights, Soho, Wardour Street. You hope you make friends with the guys that you meet. Somebody shows you round. Now you've met the London boys things seem good again, someone cares about you".
Me and my mates Shep and Bugsy used to sample local 'produce' in Shep's spare room at Mrs Uriarte's house in Tadley and while we were tripping out we'd listen to early Bowie and Hot Chocolate (as mentioned earlier in this list - but it bears repeating). Great great memories and this song is the one I remember most strongly. I even came up with a theory, totally untrue, that Bowie was, like us, a smalltown boy who'd moved to London and got bullied and forced to do drugs by older, more streetwise boys.
This was the b-side of Rubber Band (number sixty-two in this list) and was covered by Marc Almond who, coming from Southport, possibly had the same reading of the song as me and my mates. What an underrated pop star Marc Almond is.
"The first time that you tried a pill you feel a little queasy, decidedly ill. You're gonna be sick, but you mustn't lose faith. To let yourself down would be a big disgrace".
18 - STATION TO STATION
So that's it. The full set. Every single song from Station to Station has made the Top 100 and it seems right and proper that the title track, all ten minutes plus of it, is the pick of the bunch.
We hear Bowie sing of "the return of the Thin White Duke throwing darts in lover's eyes", "one magical moment to Kether to Malkuth", and how "the European cannon is here". But when he claims "it's not the side effects of the cocaine" I think we all know that it very much is the side effects of the cocaine.
In fact, this song is a gak fulled odyssey and a trip into the mind of a paranoid seventies androgynous rock star. David Peace could write a book about it. Todd Haynes could make a film about it. You can castigate drug users all you like but who can honestly say that back in 1976 they weren't snorting a Bolivian mountain's worth of toot and writing ten minute songs about Aleister Crowley, gnosticism, and Kabbalah? The David Robert Jones army did not march across the Andes on Inca Cola.
17 - "HEROES"
"I wish you could swim like the dolphins. Like dolphins can swim".
This one regularly tops Bowiephiles lists of his best songs but it's number seventeen on my list. The sixth track from the album of the same name certainly has an anthemic quality - although, at one point, it started getting played just a bit too much. Sporting events and the like. Never had Bowie down as a big sports fan.
Rolling Stone called it the 46th greatest song ever, NME the 15th. Apparently it's a reference to the Neu song Hero and if you're a Bowie fan and you've never checked out Neu then what are you waiting for. Get to it.
A co-write with Eno it's been covered, with varying degrees of success, by Oasis, Depeche Mode, Peter Gabriel, Celtic Frost, Coldplay, Motorhead, King Crimson, Blondie, and TV On The Radio.
"We can be heroes, just for one day".
16 - WARSZAWA
The 8th choice from Low is a mostly instrumental, almost ambient, number co-penned with Eno and the inspiration for Joy Division's pre-Joy Division name, Warsaw.
Been covered by Nine Inch Nails, Philip Glass, and, for some unfathomable reason, Red Hot Chili Peppers.
As has been previously stated side two of Low works best as a suite
but, for my money (and I ain't got much of that), this is the best piece
of that suite. It makes me feel sad, elegiac, and like I've been
walking in the rain which I had the day I posted this one.
The weird vocal bit in the middle is not Polish, as you may reasonably expect, but nonsense essentially. Based on a piece by a Polish folk choir, though.
The weird vocal bit in the middle is not Polish, as you may reasonably expect, but nonsense essentially. Based on a piece by a Polish folk choir, though.
15 - BE MY WIFE
"Sometimes you get so lonely. Sometimes you get nowhere".
The NINTH pick from Low is a bit of an outrider on the album with its traditional, but quite lovely, lyric and its ragtime piano opener. I'd be happy to see my imaginary bride walk up the aisle to this!
Released as the second single from Low it was Bowie's first 'flop' in over five years, since Changes, quite surprisingly.
"Please be mine. Share my life. Stay with me. Be my wife".
14 - MODERN LOVE
"I know when to go out and when to stay in, get things done. I catch a paper boy but things don't really change. I'm standing in the wind but I never wave bye-bye".
I remember this as a kid and I wasn't a big fan but time has been kind to it, a slow burner if you will. I really have little to say about it except it's an absolute banger. I'll leave it at that.
"It's not really work. It's just the power to charm".
13 - STARMAN
"There's a starman waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds".
Seventh choice from Ziggy Stardust LP and sharing the lyrics seems a bit superfluous as you'd imagine everyone in the Western World knows them off by heart anyway.
Apparently it was a late addition to the album replacing a cover of
Chuck Berry's Round and Round. Wikipedia further informs me that the
song borrows ideas and riffs from T Rex's Telegram Sam and Hot Love, You
Keep Me Hangin' On by The Supremes, and Over the Rainbow from The
Wizard of Oz! None of which detracts from its greatness.
The July 1972 TOTP performance has been cited by many as the moment of their conversion to all things Bowie. Not me though. I was only three and more interested in Little Jimmy Osmond's Long Haired Lover from Liverpool.
Covered by 10,000 Maniacs, Boy George, Garbage, Nena, Mates of State, and Phillip Boa!
"Let the children lose it. Let the children use it. Let all the children boogie".
The July 1972 TOTP performance has been cited by many as the moment of their conversion to all things Bowie. Not me though. I was only three and more interested in Little Jimmy Osmond's Long Haired Lover from Liverpool.
Covered by 10,000 Maniacs, Boy George, Garbage, Nena, Mates of State, and Phillip Boa!
"Let the children lose it. Let the children use it. Let all the children boogie".
12 - ASHES TO ASHES
"Do you remember a guy that's been in such an early song? I've heard a rumour from Ground Control".
Track #4 from Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is its lead single and the track that became Bowie's second UK number one. I can remember watching the video on TOTP as a confused eleven year old. I think I thought he was ripping off Visage (!) while at the same time being a little bit scared. It was, at the time, the most expensive video ever made! By David Mallet who went on to direct promos for Queen, Iron Maiden, and Rush.
It's a catch up with Major Tom from Space Oddity as well as, according
to Bowie, an attempt to draw a line under the seventies and reboot ready
for the eighties. The song is a weird space funk nursery rhyme that,
despite its oddness, seems to have about four choruses.
Anyone who's heard it more than a couple of times (and surely that's everyone) will have lines like "I'm happy, hope you're happy too", "I'm stuck with a valuable friend", "Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom's a junkie", and the closing refrain "My mother said to get things done you better not mess with Major Tom" as on-demand earworms for eternity. Listen to it again and see if I'm not right.
NME ranked it as the 5th best single of the year behind Love Will Tear Us Apart, Going Underground, Mirror in the Bathroom, and Atmosphere to give you a sense of the era. Smash Hits writer Deanne Pearson didn't like it and said, very wrongly, it was "not a hit"
" I've never done good things, I've never done bad things. I never did anything out of the blue".
Anyone who's heard it more than a couple of times (and surely that's everyone) will have lines like "I'm happy, hope you're happy too", "I'm stuck with a valuable friend", "Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom's a junkie", and the closing refrain "My mother said to get things done you better not mess with Major Tom" as on-demand earworms for eternity. Listen to it again and see if I'm not right.
NME ranked it as the 5th best single of the year behind Love Will Tear Us Apart, Going Underground, Mirror in the Bathroom, and Atmosphere to give you a sense of the era. Smash Hits writer Deanne Pearson didn't like it and said, very wrongly, it was "not a hit"
" I've never done good things, I've never done bad things. I never did anything out of the blue".
11 - I DIG EVERYTHING
"I've got more friends than I've had hot dinners. Some of them were losers, but the rest of them are winners. Rick, John, Sally, a connection named Paul. Holy low on money, their intentions are tall. We smoke and talk in my room and we dig everything"
About a decade band I joined my friends Owen and Mike in running, and DJing at, an irregular (sometimes popular, sometimes less so) club night they'd called I Dig Everything. We'd play this most nights we did it - and we'd play other Bowie tunes too. But we'd also play everything from Wimple Winch to En Vogue, Angelic Upstarts to Lata Mangeshkar, and Magazine to Lou Reed. It was a lot of fun and this song brings back both those times and earlier ones.
But I still dig the tune. Its innocence. As a young Bowie talks about feeding the lions in Trafalgar Square, waving to policemen (who don't wave back), sunbathing for love, and getting a backstreet room in the bad part of town.
Released in August 1966, it was Bowie's last side for Pye and like everything he'd done up to that point it was, of course, a massive failure. But not for then still unborn me.
10 - SHE'S GOT MEDALS
"She'd walk through the door and she'd set up the drinks on the house. She played a good game of darts, and the men slapped her back and never took her out. She wore a trenchcoat khaki. Her hobnail boots were full of holes".
Another feature of I Dig Everything nights (and many other nights) seemed to be singing along, very loudly, very drunkenly, in the back of taxis to this on the way home. Not saying the taxi driver was playing it. They were probably listening to Magic FM or a very weak drum'n'bass remix of Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time.
Those not a fan of this Anthony Newley era will be pleased to know that this is the last selection from the time and everything that follows will be Bowie in his imperial pomp. Oh, and SPOILER ALERT, no room for Tin Machine.
"People say that when the moon is full and all the stars have gone to bed. You can see her ghost but that's a lie because the naughty woman isn't dead. She deserted on the previous morning. Replaced her uniform with dresses silk and green, called herself Eileen, came to London town. Now she's settled down".
9 - LIFE ON MARS?
"Sailors fighting in the dance hall. Oh man, look at those cavemen go. It's the freakiest show. Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy. Oh man, wonder if he'll ever know he's in the best selling show. Is there life on Mars?"
Track #5 from Hunky Dory in this Top 100 features piano from Rick Wakeman and some of Bowie's most cryptic, or perhaps just plain nonsense, lyrics (inspired, legend has it, by William Burroughs) though I do like to think that "it's on America's tortured brow that Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow" is Bowie being prophetic about the rise of Trump and America's move towards the more hideous elements of far right populism!
This reached no.3 in the UK charts when it came out as a single, Pitchfork named it the greatest single of the entire seventies (Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough was second and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? was third), and it's been covered by Barbra Streisand, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Seu Jorge, The Flaming Lips, The Dresden Dolls, and, of course, Momus. Bowie once introduced it like this:- "You fall in love, you write a love song. This is a love song"
"See the mice in their million hordes from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads. Rule Britannia is out of bounds to my mother, my dog, and clowns".
8 - YOUNG AMERICANS
"Scanning life through the picture window she finds the slinky vagabond. He coughs as he passes her Ford Mustang but Heaven forbid, she'll take anything".
Only our third pick from the album of the same title, this song is all Cadis, Chryslers, and President Nixon. It's even got a 'mama' and a 'gee' and, in lesser hands, could have been plain embarrassing. A white London boy almost pretending to be a black American shouldn't really work (there are plenty of black Americans around to do this kind of thing already) but Bowie, of course, has enough panache, adds another of his own spin, and has THAT voice so, obviously, it not only works but it's brilliant. It even broke Bowie in the US where his glam rock stuff had failed to gain traction outside the big cities.
Contains an almost direct lift from The Beatles "A Day in the Life" and, as if in payback, John Lennon appeared on the album. This song features David Sanborn on sax and a young Luther Vandross on backing vocals and was later covered by The Cure!
7 - BREAKING GLASS
"Baby. I've been breaking glass in your room again. Listen. Don't look at the carpet. I drew something awful on it. See, you're such a wonderful person but you got problems oh-oh-oh-oh. I'll never touch you".
That's the entire, slightly disturbing, lyric to the TENTH selection from Low (there's only one left, what could it be and will it crop up in the final six?). It features blistering guitar from Carlos Alomar, some excellent work from Eno on the Minimoog, and was a co-write with bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis.
At less than two minutes long and considering its paranoid, drug induced, almost violent feel it was, perhaps, an odd choice for a single. Less surprisingly, all things considered, it failed to bother the hit parade. It's bothering this top 100 alright, though!
6 - DIAMOND DOGS
"This ain't rock'n'roll, this is genocide".
"As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent you asked for the latest party. With your silicone hump and your ten inch stump, dressed like a priest you was, Tod Browning's freak you was".
The title track is only the 3rd song from 74's Diamond Dogs LP and I was reminded of its greatness when attending a SELFS event on January 8th with my friend Simon called 'Is David Bowie a God?'. What do you think?
"The Halloween Jack is a real cool cat and he lives on top of Manhattan Chase".
Halloween Jack isn't as well known as the Thin White Duke or, certainly, Ziggy but he does seem to be a pretty powerful invention. Living on top of an abandoned skyscraper in New York City, sliding down ropes like "Tarzie", and operating in some sort of grim dystopia of mutated bodies and hussies with featurless faces.
It's viewed as the song that started Bowie's move away from glam towards proto-punk. It rocks. Probably better then you remember (if you haven't listened to it for a while).
"In the year of the scavenger, the season of the bitch, sashay on the boardwalk, scurry to the ditch".
5 - PANIC IN DETROIT
"He looked a lot like Che Guevara, drove a diesel van, kept his gun in quiet seclusion, such a humble man. The only survivor of the National People's Gang. Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph, he wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone".
Track #7 from Aladdin Sane is Bowie recounting Iggy Pop's recounting of the 1967 Detroit Riots in which about twenty people actually died. Rolling Stone magazine described the song as "a paranoid descendant of Nowhere to Run by Detroits Martha and the Vandellas and the music has, fantastically. been summed up as a "salsa variation on the Bo Diddley beat".
"He laughed at accidental sirens that broke the evening gloom. The police had warned of repercussions. They followed none too soon. A trickle of strangers were all that were left alive".
4 - QUEEN BITCH
"Oh yeah, I'm up on the eleventh floor and I'm watching the cruisers below. He's down on the street and he's trying hard to pull sister Flo. Oh, my heart's in the basement, my weekend's at an all-time low 'cause she's hoping to score so I can't see her letting him go. Walk out of her heart, walk out of her mind".
The sixth track from Hunky Dory owes quite a debt to The Velvet Underground but not as much a debt as The Killers owe to this song. Parts of Mr Brightside are a straight rip! Brandon Flowers was reasonably honest about it, as was Bowie who always claimed this song as a tribute to Lou Reed and the VU. Althought if you listen to the primary riff you'll notice it's actually very similar to Eddie Cochran's Three Steps to Heaven.
It's a dance floor filler for sure as I've witnessed many times and everyone seems to enjoy the line about the "frock coat and bibberty bobberty hat". Covers have come from Eater, Green River, The Tragically Hip, and, appropriately enough, Lou Reed!
"She's an old-time ambassador of sweet-talking, night-walking games and she's known in the darkest clubs for pushing ahead of the dames. If she says she can do it then she can do it, she don't make false claims. But she's a queen and such are queens that your laughter is sucked in their brains".
3 - SOUND AND VISION
"Ah ah, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. Don't you wonder sometimes 'bout sound and vision? Blue, blue, electric blue, that's the color of my room where I will live. Blue, blue, pale blinds drawn all day, nothing to do, nothing to say. Blue, blue, I will sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision and I will sing, waiting for the gift of sound and vision. Drifting into my solitude, over my head. Don't you wonder sometimes 'bout sound and vision?"
For the top three I'll transcribe the entirety of the lyrics. Luckily there's not many here. This is the eleventh and final track from Low which means, like Station to Station, it's the only album in which EVERY single song on it has been deemed worthy a place in the Top 100. Quite rightly so as it's my favourite Bowie album and this is a personal list.
For a single, and an opening single on a major artist's album, it's an odd choice. The vocals only come in about halfway through, and, in some ways, it almost comes across as an afterthought or an out take but it's anything but. It's profoundly touching. In fact I have decided there are only two Bowie songs more touching!
2 - FIVE YEARS
"Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing. News had just come over we had five years left to cry in. News guy wept and told us Earth was really dying. Cried so much his face was wet then I knew he was not lying. I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies.I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs. My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare.I had to cram so many things to store everything in there - and all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people - and all the nobody people - and all the somebody people. I never thought I'd need so many people. A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children. If the black hadn't a-pulled her off I think she would have killed them. A soldier with a broken arm fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac. A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest and a queer threw up at the sight of that. I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour drinking milk shakes cold and long, smiling and waving and looking so fine. Don't think you knew you were in this song - and it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor - and I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there. Your face, your race, the way that you talk. I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk. We've got five years, stuck on my eyes. Five years, what a surprise. We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot. Five years, that's all we've got. We've got five years, what a surprise. Five years, stuck on my eyes. We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot. Five years, that's all we've got. We've got five years, stuck on my eyes. Five years, what a surprise. We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot. Five years, that's all we've got. We've got five years, what a surprise. Five years, stuck on my eyes. We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot. Five years, that's all we've got. Five years. Five years. Five years. Five years"
"My brain hurts like a warehouse" - that's my WhatsApp bio!
But it's only one of many many great lines that all contribute to a whole far greater than its parts in this vision of that most Bowiesque of dystopian apocalyptica. Our seventh, and final, choice from the Ziggy LP is the opening track from that album and it's been covered by The Polyphonic Spree, Angel Olsen, Guided by Voices, and no lesser man than Fish from Marillion (on an album in which he also covers Apeman by The Kinks and Jeepster by T.Rex).
The lustrum of the title, Bowie claimed, was down to a dream in which his deceased father told him never to fly again and that he'd die in five years. The 'market square' mentioned in the song is that of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire where David debuted both this album and Hunky Dory.
I love this footage, I love the way Bowie enunciates certain words and phrases like "waving and smiling", "boys", and "toys" and I love lines like "it was cold and rained so I felt like an actor", "I kiss you, you're beautiful. I want you to walk", and, of course "my brain hurts like a warehouse". Put simply, I love absolutely everything about this song. What could be better?
Extinction Rebellion, according to Wikipedia, have taken to using the track at their demonstrations so it lives on even if David doesn't, even if the planet doesn't perhaps!
1 - QUICKSAND
"I'm closer to the Golden Dawn. immersed in Crowley's uniform of imagery. I'm living in a silent film, portraying Himmler's sacred realm of dream reality. I'm frightened by the total goal, drawing to the ragged hole and I ain't got the power anymore. No, I ain't got the power anymore. I'm the twisted name on Garbo's eyes, living proof of Churchill's lies, I'm destiny. I'm torn between the light and dark where others see their targets, divine symmetry. Should I kiss the viper's fang or herald loud the death of Man? I'm sinking in the quicksand of my thought and I ain't got the power anymore. Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief. Knowledge comes with death's release. Aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah. I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man, just a mortal with the potential of a superman. I'm living on. I'm tethered to the logic of Homo Sapien, can't take my eyes from the great salvation of bullshit faith. If I don't explain what you ought to know you can tell me all about it on the next Bardo.
I'm sinking in the quicksand of my thought and I ain't got the power anymore. Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief. Knowledge comes with death's release. Aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah. Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief. Knowledge comes with death's release. Aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah".
"Knowledge comes with death's release" seems an appropriate line to end a tribute to an artist who passed less than four years ago but that's not the reason I've chosen it as number one. That's because it's absolutely beautiful. It's sad, it's tender, it's dark and light at the same time, and it's jam-packed with allusions to death, occult belief, and the political events that defined the twentieth century.
In that it's not unlike a few other Bowie songs but, for me, it's encapsulated best and with the most exquisite beauty. References to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley, Heinrich Himmler, Winston Churchill, and the Spanish double agent Juan Pujol Garcia mean you could keep researching this song for longer than it would take to listen to every note of music David Bowie has ever recorded but even if that's not the kind of thing you'd be inclined to do you should find a spare seven minutes to listen to this and that's not something I thought I'd ever write about something with Rick Wakeman playing piano on.
The rest of the band is Trevor Bolder (bass), Woody Woodmansey (drums), and, of course, Mick Ronson on guitar and Mellotron. Ronson also did the string arrangement and this song appeared at the end of the first side of 1971's Hunky Dory, the seventh track from that album to make our list and, you'll have noted, the absolute top song in a selection that has many many many many contenders.
If you've been affected by any of the choices on this list then please go back to number 100 and listen to them all over again! Thanks for reading and, to David Bowie, thankyou for the music.
I'm sinking in the quicksand of my thought and I ain't got the power anymore. Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief. Knowledge comes with death's release. Aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah. Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief. Knowledge comes with death's release. Aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah, aah-aah".
"Knowledge comes with death's release" seems an appropriate line to end a tribute to an artist who passed less than four years ago but that's not the reason I've chosen it as number one. That's because it's absolutely beautiful. It's sad, it's tender, it's dark and light at the same time, and it's jam-packed with allusions to death, occult belief, and the political events that defined the twentieth century.
In that it's not unlike a few other Bowie songs but, for me, it's encapsulated best and with the most exquisite beauty. References to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley, Heinrich Himmler, Winston Churchill, and the Spanish double agent Juan Pujol Garcia mean you could keep researching this song for longer than it would take to listen to every note of music David Bowie has ever recorded but even if that's not the kind of thing you'd be inclined to do you should find a spare seven minutes to listen to this and that's not something I thought I'd ever write about something with Rick Wakeman playing piano on.
The rest of the band is Trevor Bolder (bass), Woody Woodmansey (drums), and, of course, Mick Ronson on guitar and Mellotron. Ronson also did the string arrangement and this song appeared at the end of the first side of 1971's Hunky Dory, the seventh track from that album to make our list and, you'll have noted, the absolute top song in a selection that has many many many many contenders.
If you've been affected by any of the choices on this list then please go back to number 100 and listen to them all over again! Thanks for reading and, to David Bowie, thankyou for the music.
