DESERT ISLAND DISCS
What sort of category does this song fall into? It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before; I find it eccentric but strangely touching. I love the arrangement - the bass high in the mix, the backing singing complimenting the melody (‘dum do wah…’) and the way the saxophones underscore Bowie’s fantastic voice on the rousing chorus ('His name was always Buddy').
With his found words technique (cutting up newspaper articles and juxtaposing random sentences) Bowie’s lyrics boldly carried the legacy of the Dadaists into the seventies charts. The song makes no sense but the music is so strong and evocative that it doesn’t seem to need to.
I’m not sure if Bowie intended his lyrics to be funny but I often head e-mails to friends with obscure Bowie quotes to raise a chuckle and to test their memory of the great man’s lyrics. (‘Jung the foreman prayed at work’).
If you want to play this game with a fellow Bowie fan, I particularly recommend his song The Cygnet Committee - from the title on it’s a feast of hilarious surreal juxtapositions. Quotes like these evoke fond memories of that time in the seventies when Bowie’s quirkiness represented a kind of crazy freedom to us.
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