Favorite Bowie song

[SR]

Mine is young Americans. "Well well well, would you carry a razor in case, just in case of depression" foiled by the surging upbeat music has always riveted me.

There are so many, but give it shot....or not.

[Pandemonium]

I want to say Heart's Filthy Lesson but ultimately it's Ashes To Ashes. There is just so much going on in that song.

[kv]

Ashes to ashes as well

[Bandit72]

Let's Dance.

[Hype]

On one level it has to be Ziggy Stardust (because I love the Bauhaus and Nina Hagen covers -- that riff is Keith Richards-perfect.)

But I think considering more aspects of what I love about music, and Bowie in particular, it's got to be The Width of a Circle... it's got a very similar vibe to Three Days or Then She Did to me... that kind of epic meandering bass-driven thing with incredible lyrics (very philosophical), and seemingly disparate parts all kind of coalescing into this single story.

[Matz]

Scary monsters

[Artemis]

It's difficult to choose only one favourite, but for today, I will go with Station to Station.
This past week, I've listened to the album Station to Station a few times, so the opening track by the same name has really stuck out for me.

This is a great tune song to listen to on a really good sound system or with head phomes, imo.





Here's a shorter version from the movie, Christiane F.(Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo)



http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicb ... avid-bowie

In just six (long) tracks, Station to Station manages to incorporate almost everything fantastic about pop music: it's dramatic, stylish, emotional and danceable. It's not the most celebrated Bowie album – that would be The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars or Low – but it's been my favourite right from the moment I heard it, aged 16. The sleeve alone has a huge sense of occasion, with bold red typography that omits the spaces between the words, and a glorious picture of a drip-thin Bowie emerging from a spacecraft, a still from his film The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Then there's the mythology. Being a teenager, I was particularly susceptible to the stories about this record – that it was made in a cocaine blizzard in LA that involved witchcraft, the collecting of Nazi memorabilia and an exorcism that left a silhouette of Satan stained on the bottom of a swimming pool. Yet despite the fact that Bowie was at his maddest (he told NME that Britain needed a fascist leader a few weeks after the album's release in 1976), and so out of it that he can't even remember recording the thing, Station to Station is almost frighteningly accomplished, with a glittering, malevolent glamour I've heard on no other record.

Has there ever been a more epic album opener than the title track? The first minute is just a sound effect – a train travelling counter-intuitively from the right speaker to the left. There are screams of feedback, and then the band kick in with a kind of art-rock death march before Bowie finally announces his presence, operatically declaiming one of the great first lines: "The return of the thin white duke, throwing darts in lovers' eyes."

The Thin White Duke was Bowie's final persona, a character who embodied the allure of evil, immaculately dressed in waistcoat and Oxford bags, crooning rather than rocking out, determinedly European. He's never looked or sounded better.

As the song reaches the five-minute mark, speeds up and suddenly turns into a full-on disco number, the Duke shows his decadence in another line that impressed the 16-year-old me no end: "It's not the side-effects of the cocaine – I'm thinking that it must be love". Narcotically fuelled, dropping oblique references to Crowley and strange religions, Bowie blasts away his immediate Philly soul past and speeds into a more experimental future over 10 totally exhilarating minutes. The Berlin trilogy of albums would come next: as Bowie announces, "the European cannon is here".


That such a monumental opener doesn't overshadow the rest of the album shows how much Bowie was on fire. Golden Years – a big hit in both the UK and US – refines the "plastic soul" of previous album Young Americans into something suave and addictive. Stay is savage funk deconstructed by brilliant, if audibly wired, musicians. I used to feel that TVC15 was rather pedestrian compared to the rest of the album, but its second half is just inspired, jet-propelled by hysterical backing vocals, what sounds like a crazed concert pianist, and feedback that's almost musique concrete. It becomes apparent over the course of Station to Station that Bowie had found a band that could do almost anything, from Broadway-style showstoppers to krautrock – which is no doubt why he stuck with them (and vice versa) through the rest of the decade, Low, Heroes and all.

The two other tracks are ballads that get to the heart of Station to Station's – and Bowie's – ultimate appeal. Word on a Wing has a lyric whose meaning still remains tantalisingly out of reach: is it about a quest for meaning in life? For God? Is it sincere, or some kind of demonic piss-take? Then there's Wild Is the Wind, a cover of a song made famous by Nina Simone, on which Bowie gives a Sinatra-esque vocal performance so earth-shaking that it would have most other singers waving the white flag.

It's the tension between the artifice and the emotion, the sheer enigmatic complexity of what's being expressed, and the uncanny feeling that the band are creating something that's not entirely down to their own consciousness that has kept me listening to Station to Station for more than 20 years. The cocaine had one welcome side-effect: the fact that Bowie doesn't remember making it means it will never be demystified, and the Duke's corrupt glamour will therefore never fade.

[blackula]

Life on Mars and Kooks are of my favorites

[tubro]

Been kicking this around all week. First, RIP, Bowie. I second the emotion that this one really stung.
It's hard to count the many things that Bowie did that changed everything (or if he didn't do it first, he did it best and loudest and with the most impact). Important things like queerness. Gay? Not gay? Bi-? Who cares? I certainly don't know or care. but it's okay to be queer and proud and open today and it wasn't when Bowie started dressing up as he did in the ziggy era.
Is Bowie the only thing that led to that? Hardly. But he's Bowie. Who's more identifiable in mass pop culture for bringing out this sort of alternative lifestyle to the mainstream world? And it's not just that. Not by a long shot. Mtv - Bowie. If you were there when it came on the air in the early 80s, as I was, you know it was all about Bowie. EDM. Forget those stadium shows you deejays enjoy. Never would have happened. Except that Bowie rang up his pal Eno in 76 or so and said 'hey this danceable kraut electronic music -- let's make a go of it.' Thus, Low and the rest of the Berlin trilogy. This list of why Bowie mattered, maybe the most of them all, goes on forever. I've barely scratched the surface.

Glad I saw him so many dozens of times from 78 thru his last tour. Mostly in NYC. First show was Madison square garden on the Heroes ('Stage') tour. Last time was in a Spanish disco in the Bronx on his Reality tour. Always amazing. What a talent. And a great New Yorker too. RIP.

So, fave song - Starman. Or Beauty and the Beast. Or Quicksand. Or Scary Monsters. Or Life on Mars.
Ask me in an hour and I'll name five others. (But Starman was my first fave so I think it'll always be on the list.). I'm lucky and fortunate that I have all the music on cd so whatever wasn't on my iPod I transferred there on Monday and all week I've heard nothing but.
As for Black Star, I've only been able to listen to it once, in the car on the way to work on Monday morning when the news broke. Writing about himself as if from a place after the body stopped - in the present and the past tense - is unspeakably profound and incredible.

Trying to get tix for the Carnegie hall thing. I should be able to, thru one of the artists. The bill isn't all that thrilling. I wonder if huge names will be added or if that'll happen somewhere else. They've added a second night and some more names.

Since it's a jane's site, what will perry sing? I'd love him to do Yassasin from Lodger. But I guess he'll rip it up with some of the later material. I'm afraid of Americans? So he can jump around like a circus clown? Hope it's something from the ziggy period.

[JOEinPHX]

I hate to be cliche, but Ziggy Stardust is my favorite song.

My high school soccer team had it on our pre-game warmup tape, and I have fond memories of being out in the crisp fall air kicking the ball around listening to that song.

[Mescal]

No one rides for space oddity?

Or is it too obvious

[SR]

Lazarus has held my supreme attention for days now. Music, in general, suits my needs. I listen to a band or genre based on my needs emotionally. I've largely quit listening, or seeking new music as what I've archived is so rich in nature that within it I still find gems.....gems I'm comfortable discovering. My other time is focused on tuition payments and mortgage. But this song, though not my favorite, listens like a shakes tragedy. Contectualizing this song (and video) is primal in nature. No fluff; no gratuitous hooks...just brass tacks brutal honesty done in a Bowie grandiosity that never over reaches. It's haunting

[Larry B.]

I'd like to name three.

[Matz]

Scary monsters

No! this one is

[blackcoffee]

At Christmas time we bought my 14 y.o. a record player. She'd been wanting one, but I wasn't convinced it would be used as we've got Spotify and....she's 14. I bought her a recent Bowie compilation--Nothing Has Changed--because I couldn't find Ziggy on Vinyl. Anyway, she played it nonstop.

I asked her what her favorite Bowie song was. She told me it changed on a regular basis. I think she discovered him musically through the film Perks of a Wallflower. There's a great scene where the teens drive through a long highway tunnel with Heroes at full blast. She then found Ziggy Stardust. Most recently, it was Life on Mars.

We'd been having a month-long Bowie love fest up right up to the moment I learned he'd died. That morning we all cried as she was getting ready for school. I shed tears on occasion when I see tragedy, but I've never cried for an artist--even Jim Carroll or Lou Reed--both of whom figured large in my early years. It speaks to his enduring influence that new generations would discover him, and pore over his catalog, make the music their own.

The other night I took her to see TSOL. We left for the show early, and rather than play TSOL to prepare for the show, we drove through the rain slick streets of downtown Seattle, windows down, Bowie at full blast. Tonight, we're all going over to a friend's house--someone with an extensive vinyl collection--to listen to our favorite Bowie songs together, and to share how we each discovered him. Each story will be different.

And I'm with SR--most of the time--Something about Young Americans that just gets me. I also think there is a version of Cat People out there where the opening line evokes chills.

[Artemis]

Tonight, we're all going over to a friend's house--someone with an extensive vinyl collection--to listen to our favorite Bowie songs together, and to share how we each discovered him. Each story will be different.

If I lived in your city, I would invite myself to tag along. Sounds like it will be an amazing evening. Enjoy!

My earliest Bowie song memories are from the radio- Fame and Golden Years.

[Pandemonium]

Just an FYI for those seeking early Bowie on vinyl... The first 5 studio albums (Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups) which were originally only recently available via the expensive box set will be released individually. Most fans have good things to say about the new versions compared to original pressings.

[elportosurfer9]

Right now it is Be My Wife off of Low. Such a brilliant album and so influential to many.

[Juana]

Lady Stardust