The only time I ever visited Sweden was after spending a few days in Finland in the mid-80s. The Finnish language is nothing at all like English, but Swedish kinda is. It’s not English. I can’t read or speak or…

Nicholas Pegg reported, in his excellent The Complete David Bowie, that a handful of songs are rumored to be about Bowie including Brian Eno’s “Spider and I” (1977), Bauhaus’s “King Volcano” (1983) and two Rolling Stones songs from 1973, “Angie”…

Why does the mere mention of this song make me want to snicker? I think it has something to do with a possibly manufactured controversy about its bassline, which is clearly based on that of “Under Pressure.” After initially denying…

The Tea Party was a fairly major Canadian rock band that I wasn't familiar with before learning that this song existed thanks to William Shatner's Seeking Major Tom. Sure enough, this is not only another Major Tom song, but one…

Two weeks ago, I included as part of this series a post about Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)," which describes the same events as Bowie's "Space Oddity." I remain a little baffled about the exact point of that song…

With the release of Let’s Dance, David Bowie was at the height of his pop-stardom in 1983. That’s the same year as the release of Madonna’s self-titled debut album, which opened with a song that made use of one of…

If you don’t recognize the name of this song, you’ve probably heard it, though quite possibly what you’ve heard is the German version, and the only part you might understand is “Major Tom.” If that’s the case, and you don’t…

The absolute pinnacle of space, as a matter of public consciousness, was probably 1969, the year I was born and the year of the first moon landing. It was also the year David Bowie released what would become his first…

Ridiculous proposition of the day: Bowie’s song, “Survive” is actually an answer to Gloria Gaynor’s better known disco song, “I Will Survive.” Look at these stanzas, side by side: First, from “Survive,” I should have kept you I should have…

There it, in the middle of the song performed by James Brown* in the middle of Rocky IV: Living in America Eye to eye, station to station Did the Godfather of Soul just drop a Bowie reference? As much as…