The End of the World as He Knew It — Bowie’s Top 10 Songs About the Apocalypse

Following up on yesterday’s post about Meta’s use of “Five Years” in a (possibly) unintentionally chilling ad about AI and the future, I thought I’d rank Bowie’s top 10 songs about the apocalypse…

1. “Five Years” (1972) Yeah, had to be #1. If you don’t know why, this is not the blog for you.

2. “When the Wind Blows” (1986). A relatively obscure song Bowie did for the soundtrack of an animated movie of the same name about a nuclear holocaust. Hard to be more apocalyptic than that.

3. “Sunday” (2002). “Nothing remains.” That’s how the song starts. It goes downhill from there.

4. “Diamond Dogs” (1974). Technically the spoken-word “Future Legend” is a distinct track, but that sets the stage for Hunger City, the up-is-down remnant of a world in which “fleas the size of rats suck on rats the size of cats, and ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes.”

5. “Panic in Detroit” (1973). The revolution won’t be televised, but it is depicted in this song. Perhaps Earth is not really dying in this song, but the social order is in the process of being overturned.

6. “Saviour Machine” (1970). Humanity is tempted to offload its agency to a machine that doesn’t want the responsibility. It’s self aware enough to recognize it might arrive at the decision to launch a plague, a war or simply to kill “you all”.

7. “As the World Falls Down” (1986). This seemingly sweet pop song made for the children’s movie Labyrinth is premised on— hello— the world collapsing. The title belies the syrupy music.

8. “We Are Hungry Men” (1967). An early song about overpopulation that leads to cannibalism. Not Bowie’s best song, but it nonetheless belongs on this list.

9. “Time Will Crawl” (1987). “I felt a warm, warm breeze, that melted metal and steel.” Perhaps a bit more abstract than the other songs on this list, this one shows that even on Never Let Me Down Bowie had an appetite for destruction.

10. “If You Can See Me” (2013). Also abstract, the narrator of this song promises to “take your lands and all that lays beneath…slaughter your kind [and] burn all your books and the problems they make.” Perhaps, not strictly speaking the end of the world, but the vision is not of a world I’d want to live in.

Runner-up: “Let’s Dance” (1983). Yes, “Let’s Dance” — “for fear tonight is all.” The giveaway? The mushroom cloud in the video…

Second runner-up: “Oh! You Pretty Things” (1971). In which Bowie rhymes “We’ve finished our news” with “homo sapiens have outgrown their use.” The future is not bright…