If you can look at this picture right here and rightly say, “Oh yeah! He DA MAN!“, then my commisserations on being educated well.
The rest of you, despair not, Aunty Nilofer’s Gateway to Glam-Rock school is now in session.
We shall go back to the roots of brilliant music that the eye make-up wearing twats in Greenday now play. And we shall discover how one man, often pretending to be a girl, rocked so hard that the tremors of rock-itude echoed to history and caused ten billion spontaneous orgasms that caused this generation to be born. David Bowie is, literally, the Baap of Everything.
The song under consideration: The Man Who Sold The World.
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Ok, So what is this song about? Nobody rightly knows. There has been know end of speculation, and the most convincing one seems to be that it is a semi autobiographical note about his own shifting identities: Ziggy Stardust, Thin White Duke. See, much like Lady Gaga today (and much unlike her also), David Bowie was renowned for slipping in and out of theatrical persona’s. He did more the Hulk has to change clothes.
Other people say its about a conversation with the Devil. Nobody’s sure. Find your own meaning and take it home with you. But I guarantee it will haunt you when lie in bed on your own. That, I find is one of the hallmarks of great music. It is undefinable, and yet, poignantly personal.
Since then a lot a people have sung and ruined this song.
Nirvana:
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And Lulu:
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And my personal favourite, Nine Inch Nails:
[youtube_video id=RRyqZ4BGl6Y]
But none of them are a shadow to the original Bowie version (Kobain, especially, seems to be amping up his native irritating voice). The heavy, almost ritualistic guitars combined with Bowie’s restrained, but stiletto shrill voice, create an undescribable magic. Just scroll up and listen to it again.
And that is how you make musical enchantry. One man and his voice. Not with computers, and certainly not with repeated entreaties to come down to the dance floor.
