Top 10 Bowie Songs
Top 10 Bowie Songs:
These are my personal favorites, not which songs I think are “objectively best.” Sort of in order, but some are too close to call.
1. Station to Station
This song is dark, beautiful, complex, innovative, and disturbing. Its enveloping atmosphere and progression of emotions captures a sense of the search for life’s meaning, the fear of emptiness and hope for transcendence.
2. Ziggy Stardust
The perfect archetypal rock song for the perfect archetypal rock star.
3. Subterraneans
So beautiful, longing, and sad. Bowie’s a master at capturing this particular emotion; “Subterraneans” is the best example, although…
4. The Bewlay Brothers
Even the Bowie encyclopedia doesn’t seem to quite know what to make of this song’s enigmatic lyrics. Whatever it’s about, the vivid imagery and haunting music are eerie and sad, steeped in a nostalgia for something deeply precious and irrevocably lost. (Plus, Bowie deserves major props for turning that chipmunk vocal effect last seen in “The Laughing Gnome” into something effectively ominous here.)
5. “Heroes”
Specific and universal, ironic and yet deeply moving–”Heroes” is an epic contradiction of a song. (I already raved about it here.)
6. Always Crashing in the Same Car
So much emotion brews beneath the cool surface of this song. It is a mood, a musical landscape of numb disconnection.
7. Alternative Candidate
I can’t believe this jaunty and twisted outtake wasn’t even on the album!
8. Cygnet Committee
Perhaps a bit over the top, but I love the sincerity of this folk epic. Bowie’s impassioned criticism of the corruption of 1960s ideals is a reminder of the substance beneath his style.
9. My Death (July 3, 1973 live version)
This isn’t even a Bowie song, but it ranks in my top ten for the quality of the performance alone.
10. The Man Who Sold the World
Thanks to Nirvana, I grew up with this song; I still adore Kurt Cobain’s raw vocal performance. Bowie’s original is equally sad, with a detached performance that gives its emotion a more distant quality. The lyrics are among his early best.
(Runners up: Life on Mars?, Five Years, Moonage Daydream, Rock N Roll Suicide, Aladdin Sane, Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing, Big Brother, Young Americans, Who Can I Be Now, Stay, Wild is the Wind, A New Career in a New Town, Neukoln, Ashes to Ashes, Ricochet, Loving the Alien, Jump They Say, Outside, I’m Afraid of Americans)
I know my descriptions tend to linger on the angsty aspects of the songs, but a lot what makes them so effective is Bowie’s irony, self-awareness, and sense of the absurd.
Tags: david bowie
6 Responses to “Top 10 Bowie Songs”
rm on October 29, 2009 12:04 pm | Link
My own list is largely very different, but I just had to say yes yes yes on My Death! I’ve had that recording of it for over 20 years and it still gives me chills.
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rusty-halo on October 29, 2009 12:57 pm | Link
I wish someone had showed me that “My Death” performance years ago. It would’ve turned me into an instant fan, and maybe I’d have been able to see him live before he stopped performing.
What would your list be like? Different by era or types of songs…?
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txvoodoo on October 29, 2009 7:25 pm | Link
I love Heroes. And pretty much everything from 1971 thru 1980 :D
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rusty-halo on November 3, 2009 6:59 pm | Link
The amount of quality material he released between those years astounds me. He wasn’t just brilliant; he was insanely prolific!
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Jason on November 3, 2009 12:21 pm | Link
Happy and surprised to see so much love for Station to Station!
Also surprised you don’t seem to like Scary Monsters much.
I love Jacques Brel. If you don’t mind listening to songs in French, check out more of his stuff. Bowie is heavily influenced by him in terms of emotive performance. (I think Port of Amsterdam is the only other Brel song he did?)
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rusty-halo on November 3, 2009 6:58 pm | Link
It’s totally freaking me out that you commented here!
“Station to Station” is fantastic. It’s my favorite Bowie song, but I think my favorite album overall is Ziggy Stardust–it’s more cohesive and the songs are more consistently strong. Though I have this feeling that ten years from now, Low will be the one that means the most to me.
I do like Scary Monsters a lot. Bowie’s just got so much good stuff! Maybe it’s also that it’s very strong as an album, but the individual songs don’t stand out as much? Though “Ashes to Ashes” is wonderful, and I also really like “Scary Monsters” and “Kingdom Come.”
I think I connect more with younger Bowie, though. He was such an insecure mess, and I probably relate to a lot of his themes about trying to figure out yourself and your place in the world. I think he was becoming a more functional human being by the time of Scary Monsters and so I relate to it less, which is… depressing. (Not that it’s all flowers and puppies, but everything after “Heroes” feels more composed and in control, less raw and spiritually/emotionally messy than his earlier work.)
As far as I know, those are the only two Jacques Brel songs Bowie covered. I’ll have to download some Jacques Brel. Bowie has put a huge amount of stuff onto my “must listen” list. The two albums he did with Iggy Pop in Berlin are next on my list. Except I haven’t even exhausted Bowie’s work yet; I haven’t listened to his three most recent albums at all because I like having the prospect of new-to-me Bowie songs to look forward to. *sigh* If only I’d gotten into his music a few years earlier and could’ve seen him live!
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