Bowie Cover of the Week: Brendan Benson performs “Candidate”

The “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprised)” sequence on Diamond Dogs is one of my favorite pieces of music. I think of it as a single song, which like, say, “Blackstar” or the Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” has a song-within-a-song, but the actual album (and, annoyingly for shuffle purposes, the CD), identified the three parts as distinct. That said, Brendan Benson’s cover of “Candidate” is not of the middle part of what’s on Diamond Dogs. Instead, it’s a cover of what might be a demo, or an abandoned project that eventually evolved into that more familiar “Candidate.” The song, such that it is, was recorded during the Diamond Dogs period but wasn’t released until 1990 as a bonus track. It’s more a curiosity than a song I’d normally want to hear, but as such it also isn’t often covered. More for variety than anything else, that’s why I’m selecting Benson’s recording of the song as “Cover of the Week.”

There are a few lines that carry over from this “Candidate” to the Diamond Dogs version, but in general this version is more abstract than anything that made it on to the final album. Bowie famously used the “cut up” technique to add random elements to songs while writing Diamond Dogs. Bowie would revisit the idea of chaos and non-linearism (my word) throughout his career. He would often use lyrics to obscure meaning he might have felt was more clearly expressed by the music itself, or just to telegraph the idea that the world doesn’t make sense and that stories don’t come in neat, linear packages. This “Candidate” is an example of all that.

Confusing though the words are, there’s a vague outline of a topic here. Keeping in mind that Bowie originally set out to make a 1984 musical, I am guessing that this song has something to do with the origin of Big Brother (who ultimately gets a a far more straightforward song, “Big Brother,” on Diamond Dogs). Amidst nonsense and gibberish, the narrator of this “Candidate” clearly identifies himself as a candidate who wants to “make you a deal.” The song ends with its most understandable line— “vote now for the candidate.” As an aspiring dictator, the narrator calls himself “the Fuhrerling.” The song is a reminder that like Hitler, some dictators don’t seize power through force but get elected. The public gives away its freedoms in an exchange that retrospectively makes no sense. What the candidate gets out of the “deal” is clear, even if what the people who elect him get is unintelligible.

There’s also a reference in the song to “the correction room.” It’s been a while since I read 1984 and I don’t recall if that exact phrase is used in the book, but it is evocative of the infamous torcher chamber, “Room 101.”

Taken together, this jumbled song could be meant as a setup for a messianic figure emerging amidst a chaotic, non-sensible world. The chaos around him might be meant to explain his appeal, despite the ominous deal he offers. Of course, I easily could be projecting meaning on an abstract set of lyrics based on a contemporary context while trying to figure out what possible appeal Donald Trump holds out to anyone at all. But, actually, I think I’m seeing something that Bowie put in the song nearly 50 years ago.

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This is not one of Bowie’s better songs and I’m very happy with how it turned into something much better for Diamond Dogs. Benson does what he can with the material and am happy that he gave me something to select this week other than “Space Oddity,” “Heroes,” “Let’s Dance” and the handful of other songs that appear as new covers every week. Nonetheless, this cover barely qualifies— it was posted within the last week but it isn’t new— Benson recorded it in 2011 for a project called Upstairs at United. Also, this is just an audio recording with no visual elements. Despite all that, I don’t recall ever coming across another cover of this particular song, so I’m using the opportunity to post something a little atypical this week.

Brendan Benson is a well-established artist with many recordings in his personal catalogue. For more, click here to link to his website.