| David Bowie – Sweet Thing Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
"To wrangle some screams from the dawn" I think the song is inspired by William S Burroghs The Wild Boys about the companionship between rent boys. The last line before it crosses over into Candidate, "turn to crossroads and Hamburgers" almost implies that there is line between being a that life and real life, i.e. between sex and love. Not sure. |
|
| David Bowie – D.J. Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| This song is was written at the dawn of DJ culture, the huge dance parties scene that replaced "disco". Sure DJs existed but were more radio jocks and in clubs they were not the barons of culture that they seemed to become through the 80s. It may have already started to happen in New York, but in 1980, had the rise of the DJ as arbiter of taste (i.e. a god identified by their playlist) really started to happen? | |
| David Bowie – Life on Mars? Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Life on Mars seems to me to be about disillusionment. The British Empire's failure to civilise the world. The corruption of both the Capitalist the Communist Empires. How both cultures represented life as propaganda in terribly dull propaganda films, while essentially selling out the very soul of their philosophies to corruption and greed. The opening - where the parents reject the pregnant daughter is illustrative. Is there life on Mars? (because it ain't so great here). One of the most beautifully poetic songs in the English language, with stunning arrangements by Ken Pitt. | |
| David Bowie – Always Crashing in the Same Car Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
Bowie explained at the 2000 BBC gig which I was lucky to be invited to, that this song was quite literal - he was so out of it and paranoid that he drove round and round pretty much as he described in this song, crashing into the same car again and again. I think the driver pissed him off, or something. Sure, it also seems to be about the recklessness of cocaine addiction as well. But it is still a masterpiece. It was great to hear it again, live. |
|
| David Bowie – Ashes to Ashes Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
"Ashes to Ashes" is a funeral rite, a rite of passage from one plane to the next. It is the casting off of Major Tom (an attempt at least) as Bowie looked back at the pivot point of his career and without thinking produced his most celebrated record. In this song, he is saying that he is stuck with a "valuable friend" - not a valued one. He may also be talking about the poison of fame. Things were going to get much worse. But it poetically describes the experience of a brain riding high on substances: "pictures of Jap girls in synthesis" "one flash of light" and the final verse, the sense that you may never come down. The bulldozer scene in the video seems like how destruction of old things pushes new things into focus, and there was conjecture on Bowienet that the song marked Bowie's belief that the ever popular Space Oddity song was holding him back from pure artistic expression and marked its exclusion from concerts (may or may not be true). |
|
| David Bowie – Five Years Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
"A soldier with a broken arm Fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac" May be a reference to the way in which the USA entered the Second World War - the UK was a soldier with a broken arm and the wheels of a Cadillac can be seen to be the advanced war saviour machine of that American Dream. "Five Years" reflects a very sixties end of the world sense that is deeply rooted in the Cold War - there was a feeling of hopeless abandon that changed as the bleak seventies showed us the craven stupidity of the mutual threat arrangement between superpowers. Indeed the world nearly did end, five years? More like five minutes. The song provides a commentary about how things were before Ziggy. Although Bowie may not have intended Ziggy to save the world, this type of work raised the consciousness of a generation resulting in less trust for the nuclear age as protection - and more openness and acceptance of outsiders as a sort of club we all belong to. This album is seminal and significant as it represents the passing of an age where people accepted war as a solution. Politics was became more about survival and less about destruction of evil. Ziggy as a starman is a metaphor for human self inspection. We are far better for his influence and the dire warning of the dangers of being passive inhibited and scared are borne out in this fateful song. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.