Writing Great Songs

What a mind bending time to be a David Bowie fan. Just days after releasing his 28th studio album, thrilling fans world wide with its dizzying originality and that lushly beautiful voice, Music’s greatest chameleon becomes The Prettiest Star in our night sky. David Bowie has somehow confounded and turned things upside down once more and even his latest transition, into death and the great beyond, he has managed to elevate to art.  As we sit here feeling all of the emotions that come with a passing like this here are 10 of David’s songs to inspire us to incorporate the spirit of creativity and adventurousness into our own music.

Lazarus – from “Blackstar” Released 2016

The opening lines should have tipped us off “Look up here, I’m in heaven”, Bowie sings knowing that he was leaving this world and us behind. Of course this being Bowie even heaven isn’t as straight forward as one would expect: He’s apparently in danger, he’s dropped his cel phone and feeling a bit dizzy due to the height. While the biblical Lazarus is brought back to life by Jesus after 4 days in the tomb, rises from the dead, Bowie continues to speak to us after death through his music. Frail, ailing and mortal in the end we know he’ll be free, just like that bluebird.

Changes – from “Hunky Dory” Released 1971

This song is dropped like a show stopping cabaret number – with the piano and strings arrangement, tempo changes and confounding lyrics like:

“I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream of warm impermanence

I don’t know about you but I’ve never tried to use the phrase “warm impermanence” in a song.. maybe now is my chance. Bowie was never afraid of using the big words and rearranging lyrics so that their meaning became obscured was once of his trademarks.

Strangers When We Meet – from “Outside” Released 1995

The stand out track from 1995’s “outside” album has some amazingly beautiful music and more confounding lyrics:

“No preachy friars
No trendy réchauffé

Well is there is one this David Bowie wasn’t it is a trendy réchauffé. He was an original and always sought ways of becoming new and pressing the edges of convention.

Fascination – from “Young Americans” Released 1975

The result of a co-write with a very young Luther Vandross pushes David into a very funky soul direction. Bowie seems here to be writing about how things that fascination him fuels his creative process. Facination is personified as a woman, much as the “muse” has been throughout history.

Seven – from “Hours…” Released 1999

I loved hearing this song for the first time, it was so great to hear David’s voice over a simple strumming acoustic guitar. The arrangement builds and fills out over the song, but it is a beautiful reflection on “now-ness” as David describes it. In his intro to the live clip below David comments that “tomorrow is not promised” a fitting reminder.

“My heart is never broken
my patience never tried
I got seven days to live my life
or seven ways to die

The Man Who Sold the World – from “The Man Who Sold the World” Released 1970

Who knows what this one is about, but it is haunting and personal in a strangely compelling way, another of Bowie’s outcasts wandering through a sonic alternative reality world. Bowie himself explained the song in a 19997 interview with the BBC’s Marriane Hobbs:

“”I guess I wrote it because there was a part of myself that I was looking for. Maybe now that I feel more comfortable with the way that I live my life and my mental state (laughs) and my spiritual state whatever, maybe I feel there’s some kind of unity now. That song for me always exemplified kind of how you feel when you’re young, when you know that there’s a piece of yourself that you haven’t really put together yet. You have this great searching, this great need to find out who you really are.”

Of course the version the kids today know most is by Nirvana in their iconic MTV Unplugged concert.