I woke up on the 8th January and groggily heard an announcement on my parents\u2019 TV about the death of a celebrity. Asking them who\u2019d died, still blinking the sleep from my eyes, my dad announced just one word \u2013 “Bowie.” Not so much a name, I\u2019ve come to realize, but a word. A word which symbolized a pioneer of Glam Rock, an inspiration to an entire generation, an influence in the worlds of art, music and fashion alike. David Bowie\u2019s track record is one which I always pictured as full of vibrancy, dynamism and colour. He honed the skill of evolution, creating and recreating time and time again, and rarely going wrong \u2013 how could he? Music has no rules; it has no boundaries, much as artists nowadays fail to realize as they steadily become carbon copies of one another \u2013 he played this to his advantage, shocking many and inspiring many more. I can\u2019t possibly go into the entirety of his musical catalogue, and definitely can\u2019t do it justice, but I\u2019ve picked a few of my favourite Bowie songs to try and illustrate my point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Space Oddity<\/em> gives off an odd sense of foreboding to me. Combined with a theme of space travel that I equate with ELO, the music is very intricate, but gradually dissolves into disarray towards the end. It\u2019s not an unpleasant sound, merely strange. If I were my age back in 1969 and I heard that song for the first time, it would certainly give me the sense that something big was to be expected from Bowie. Something which hadn\u2019t been seen or heard before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I was ever asked to describe his music in one word, I guess I’d always say that it’s weird. Good Weird though, not Bad Weird. The closest I came when I was younger to thinking some of his work was Bad Weird was when I heard Life on Mars? <\/em>This is probably the weirdest of all Bowie\u2019s songs to me due to a combination of watching the music video and not being old enough to understand why he had florescent orange hair and bright blue eye shadow, and what on earth was he saying?<\/em> I never understood the song, but it always came across as slightly intimidating to me. Perhaps because whenever I heard it, I knew that it was that<\/em> song, that<\/em> song which never made sense but gave off an eerie feeling of otherness, a surreal quality which I found slightly unnerving. It carries a weight, a status, it demands to be listened to. It\u2019s a combination of melancholy and nostalgia, the rude realization that life isn\u2019t how you expect it to be as a child, but that the life that you think could lead exists somewhere out there, the life you\u2019re desperate to find but somehow can\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Starman<\/em> is one of my two favourite Bowie songs. It\u2019s the song I remember hearing most, the one I knew the most before any other. It\u2019s also the song I listened to on repeat the day that he died, when a good friend sat next to me as I cried, and the meaning of the song suddenly took on a whole new dimension. The song itself is very well arranged, due to the extreme musical talent of Mick Ronson, but it\u2019s always been difficult for me to escape the sadness I feel whenever I hear it, something which has only become more prominent after his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I realise this has been a bit soul-destroying so far, so the next song I picked was Fashion<\/em>, purely because I love it and it\u2019s so catchy. The snappy guitar riff was an appropriate introduction for Bowie\u2019s next phase, one reflecting the animation and pizazz of the 80s. It’s also an accurate social commentary at the beginning of a decade which did pay such close attention to appearances. It’s not particularly deep or meaningful, but it\u2019s difficult not to get the guitar riff stuck in your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s Dance<\/em> is probably the most-played Bowie song, at least in my experience. One particular line always stood out for me \u2013 \u201cif you should fall into my arms\/and tremble like a flower\u201d \u2013 I\u2019ve always thought that this particular line is very emotive, vivid in it’s imagery. The fact that it was conceived as a folk song before Nile Rogers got his hands on it is faintly hysterical though, just because I literally can’t imagine what that would sound like. The power of a guitar riff…<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love Absolute Beginners<\/em> because it appears as less abstract and more of an Actual Song. The melody has always reminded me somewhat of the lines of Under Pressure<\/em> \u2013 \u201cThis is our last dance\u2026\u201d versus “If our love could fly over mountains\u2026\u201d Combined with the haunting saxophone part, the song is quietly vulnerable \u2013 \u201cI absolutely love you\/But we’re absolute beginners\/With eyes completely open\/But nervous all the same\u201d. However, the lyrics quickly replace caution with courage, emboldened by the support and love of that other person. Beginners <\/em>demonstrates a more emotional side of Bowie’s writing, it\u2019s more realistic in its sentiments. The song shows us a more human Bowie \u2013 not the superstar, not the alien, not the Starman, but the human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last song I chose to look at is Dancing in the Street<\/em>, just because it\u2019s absolutely terrible. That’s it. I’ve always found a certain charm in the track\u2019s messiness and I’m fond of it, but overall I really can’t say with any seriousness that it’s actually good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m merely scratching the surface with Bowie\u2019s work. In a way, I feel like I\u2019m not entitled to say any of this, to attempt to analyse his work, to pass judgement as I have done. I wasn\u2019t alive at the height of his fame, I didn’t stand pressed against the edge of the stage at the final performance of Ziggy Stardust and I didn’t witness the rise of each and every new persona. However, as is the case with all music worth its salt, it\u2019s never forgotten and acquires new fans as it continues along the road of musical history. I can only try and articulate my own thoughts and emotions of Bowie\u2019s music from my own limited experience. But let me say this: I may not have been around at the time, but there is no mistaking the sheer impact I feel he had on the world, and my age does not, and will never diminish the impact I felt of his death. Bowie may have been weird, the weirdest artist I\u2019ve ever come across, but definitely, definitely Good Weird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I woke up on the 8th January and groggily heard an announcement on my parents\u2019 TV about the death of a celebrity. Asking them who\u2019d died, still blinking the sleep from my eyes, my dad announced just one word \u2013 “Bowie.” Not so much a name, I\u2019ve come to realize, but a word. A word … Continue reading Bowie – from the point of view of an absolute beginner<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicmuses.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}