David Bowie Cover of the Week: Chris Crush performs “China Girl”
The main reason I selected Chris Crush’s version of “China Girl” as cover of the week is simple: I like this guy’s voice! Nothing more complicated than that. This is a well done acoustic version of one of Bowie’s hits from the Let’s Dance album.
Well, Bowie fans know it is more than that. Iggy Pop recorded a darker version than Bowie’s on his 1977 album, The Idiot. Bowie and Iggy started writing the song in 1976. I believe Bowie was partially motivated by a series of events involving his Thin White Duke persona, which he presented as a kind of fascistic Arian pastiche. After making a series of statements seemingly sympathetic to Nazism, Bowie was photographed at Victoria Station in London apparently giving a Nazi salute (he always denied that’s what was happening). Much to his dismay, actual far-right groups started taking him seriously and adopting him as a kind of avatar, or mascot. In later years, Bowie would speak of the period as a product of his drug-induced delirium, however I think “China Girl” was the first of several steps Bowie began taking to send the message that he was not, in fact, a Nazi.
The line, “I stumbled into town, just like a sacred cow, visions of swastikas in my head, plans for everyone” is, in my estimation, a direct reference to Victoria Station incident. Overall, the song, less about a Chinese girl and more about a blue-eyed man who wants to rule the world, is a rebuke of fascism, imperialism and racism.
By 1983, however, Bowie decided to bury that message by giving his version a pop veneer with several outward signs of Eurocentrism (such as the hokey faux-Chinese sounding guitar riff, and the video making it seem like a love song). In that, “China Girl” became one of several elements of Let’s Dance that wore a disguise. Ever since, it’s been frequently misunderstood to be almost the opposite of what it actually is.
Chris Crush strips away most of the seemingly lighthearted 80s pop elements of the song. This is a man with a powerful voice, his guitar, and the naked song. His arrangement is somewhere between Iggy’s and Bowie’s, and his articulation is very clear, such that the lyrics are totally unambiguous. I don’t hear this as an especially political version of the song, but it is left exposed and more easily interpreted for its lyrics than any shiny ornaments attached to it.
Chris Crush’s name is on the video, however his social media identifies his band as Permacrush. He (or they) did a great job with this one. For more on Permacrush, you can link to the band’s website HERE.