10/1/23 Update: Much of the commentary I’ve read about this song focuses on the first part, which, as the name implies, is about a “free festival” and is usually interpreted to be Bowie’s disillusioned goodbye to the 60s. My great recent revelation is that the second part of the song, about the Venusian spaceship coming to Earth (“the sun machine…

In don’t know much about the band, Pulp, but came across this video that features various parts of the song performed by impersonators of a wide variety of familiar singers, including Bowie. Instead of linking to the video, I’m linking to the cover art for the single which is obviously a parody of the cover of The Rise and Fall…

I came across this video by French musician Sébastien Bédé while looking for videos of the week. This doesn’t qualify for my own made-up rules because it wasn’t posted in the last week— it’s a few years old. But it’s spectacular. Bédé did a series of Bowie remixes including most of the songs off, Heathen. He then created the video…

Amidst a higher than average number of “Space Oddity” and “Heroes” covers this week (some of which were quite good), this video by Sunken Screens stands out. It has all the aspects of videos I like for this weekly feature— it’s a “real” video, meaning it was shot as a video and has production qualities. It’s a somewhat obscure song,…

“Nacho” is a YouTuber who makes terrific unofficial videos. Here he claims to have “restored” this video of Bowie and Cher on the Cher Show performing “Can You Hear Me” as a duet. I am not seeing major differences from the version I used in 2016 when I posted during my song-a-day tribute, which is still on this blog. If…

KillerStar is a new band largely made up of Bowie alumni about to release a new album. The band has already released its first single, which is featured in the above video, “Should Have Known Better.” The song does not especially sound like a Bowie song. I don’t hear Gail Ann Dorsey’s familiar backing vocals, Mike Garson’s characteristic piano, Earl…

I posted an update on “Holy Holy” a few days ago which features a version of the song that was actually recorded for potential inclusion on Ziggy Stardust, but was dropped until it was used as a B-side later and has reappeared as bonus material elsewhere. Today’s post features the original mono version Bowie released as a single in 1971.…

My original 2016 post about this song (click to link) uses an excellent video of the band Shearwater performing it from a series of videos of the band covering the entire Lodger album. So this is the first appearance of the song as performed by Bowie on this blog. I’m posting it not to discuss the song itself but to…

The Bridge School is a program for educating children with severe speech and physical impairments. Neil Young and his wife are supporters and have organized an annual fundraising concert on the school’s behalf at which Bowie once performed (see my comments on the live album based on Bowie’s performances, which was oddly titled Unwashed and Slightly Phased by clicking on…

Update: 9/17/2023 “Holy Holy” sounds almost like a fragment of a song. Bowie juxtaposes religious words, thus “holy,” with intimate terms like, “hold on to anyone.” Like he couldn’t make up his mind between “holy” and “hold me.” Adding to the schizophrenic nature of the song, Bowie switches from pleading to whoever the song is directed at to “let me…

9/16/2023 In recent days I commented on such songs as “Time Will Crawl,” “Sunday” and “If You Can See Me.” Each is an example of Bowie using evocative lyrics that are not necessarily meant to be taken literally. Between the lyrics, the music, and other aspects of how Bowie presented such songs (such as where they appeared on their albums),…

“Oh God, I could do better than that… But it could have been me Yes, it could have been me“ On the surface, “Queen Bitch” is a lament about a flamboyant gay man, or possibly trans person, of whom the narrator is jealous. But the song boils over with a sense of ambition and commitment towards achievement that transcends the…

I typically don’t like to simply post somebody else’s story in this blog, but I came across a reference to this video in Nicholas Pegg’s The Complete David Bowie that in terms of facts I have nothing more to add. The story is that this is a video of Bowie performing “Time Will Crawl” on the British show, Top of…

I delayed the weekly “cover of the week” for a day so to post “Sunday” and reflect on 9/11 but I have a winner today, Shane James Bordas’ cover of one of Bowie’s most underrated songs, “Time Will Crawl.” “Time Will Crawl” is an almost stereotypical Bowie song about a post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s a real rock song which, with minimal…

It has often been written that Bowie’s 2002 album, Heathen, seemed to be a reaction to the September 11th terrorist attacks of 2001. Bowie himself talked about the coincidence, but it was a coincidence. Most of the songs, including the opening track, “Sunday,” had been written before 9/11. Nonetheless, the album captured a sentiment at the time of unease and…

I’m reading a book about my favorite album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). Its called Silhouettes and Shadows, by Adam Steiner and came out earlier this year. I’ll probably write more about it later, but I am blown away by the chapter about “Up the Hill Backwards.” Keep in mind that is is the album I listen to more, and…

Hurricane is one of those bands that has existed for a long time in various manifestations and has gone through a variety of lineups but is still around. I wasn’t previously familiar with Hurricane, which, despite this fairly faithful rendition of “Under Pressure,” has its origins as a heavy metal band, going back to 1983. The band had a hit,…

Yesterday I mentioned this song as an example, along with “Rock’n Roll with Me” and “It Ain’t Easy” of songs that seemed out of place on their albums. Specifically, the nice, calm “Strangers When We Meet” is a really odd choice to end the manic, sometimes violent 1. Outside. Bowie seemed to like the song, though, for which he did…

Yesterday I mentioned the footage of Bowie performing, “Rock’n Roll with Me” in Buffalo during a 1974 concert at Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium that’s was featured in the documentary, Moonage Daydream. This is the clip from the sequence featuring that performance. “Rock’n Roll with Me” is my least favorite song on one of my favorite albums, Diamond Dogs, but it isn’t…

I was recently listening to Arsalan Mohammad‘s excellent podcast, Album to Album in which the host was discussing The Next Day with Leah Kardos, the musical theorist who wrote Blackstar Theory. You can listen to that podcast here. Kardos has certainly influenced my own thinking about Bowie and her book is thus far the best analysis of his music I…

Artificial Intelligence is having a swift impact on music. I’m the wrong person to write about exactly how, however I have already posted AI generated videos that go along with Bowie songs, as well as one comical AI song that sounds like Bowie. I have since seen boatloads more of those, only more serious than the song I posted about…

This is the third Bowie cover I’ve posted by Puddles Pity Party, who sings as a clown (the other two were “Lazarus” and “When You Rock and Roll With Me” (click to link to those commentaries). Inevitably, someone wrote in the comments, “Clown control to Major Tom.” Had to be. This is a fairly straightforward cover of one of Bowie’s…

So, there’s this guy on YouTube who goes by the name Nacho who makes high-quality “fake” videos. Actually, “fake” is the wrong word— they are real videos that aren’t official. Some of them are quite well done, and this is a good example. I’m not going to regurgitate Nacho’s notes about how he came across the footage he used to…

I came across this cover by the Canadian alt-country band, Cuff the Duke, when I was evaluating candidates for “cover of the week.” I didn’t choose this because, while the post was new, the song itself comes from the band’s 2013 EP, In Our Time, Part II. Nonetheless, I like the cover and wanted to post it. I haven’t seen…

I came across this video while reviewing potential Bowie covers of the week. No, this one isn’t a cover, and, if not for the title of the video is not obviously about Bowie at all. Actually, the title of the song is “Captain of Dreams and Colors,” which also doesn’t obviously reference Bowie, so its the title of the video…

Texanspaniard, whose real name is Pedro Boyd, is a self-described amateur artist and musician. In this video, he purportedly takes a request for some Bowie and proceeds to perform an extended mashup of “Let’s Dance” and “Heroes.” He’s alone, accompanied by his guitar and some sort of sound effects, but not backed by a band. I like what he does…

This remastered version of “Moonage Daydream” from Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture was released in just the past few days. It doesn’t sound dramatically different than the version that’s been part of the soundtrack since 1984, but I think I detect a little more clarity and crispness (which also seems to be the case with the video quality). “Moonage Daydream”…

New York Times writer Lindsey Zoladz put out a “(Sad) Playlist for the 2023 Mets” (click to link) and included Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging.” That gave me an excuse to post this version of Bowie singing the song in 1995. I don’t follow baseball, but according to Zoladz, New York City’s other team is “enjoying a catastrophically disappointing 2023 season.”…

This one if firmly in the “guy in his basement” camp, but, despite stiff competition from a fez-themed cover of “Rebel Rebel” (I’ll get to that), I think Herbert’s rendition of this song is beautiful and deserving of “cover of the week” just because of how it sounds. “Where Are We Now” was Bowie’s surprise comeback song, issued without forewarning…

Believe it or not, there are plenty of Bowie songs that have not appeared in this blog (yet) in any form. Unless I’m forgetting, “Bombers” is one such example. I’m positing this on the anniversary of the dropping of the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Bowie has a few anti-war songs, ranging from the oblique “Fall Dog Bombs the…