Day 218 | Be My Wife

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have lost track of the anniversary of the day I proposed to Michelle. It was some time in August, 2001. I figured I had the date somewhere and I was saving this song for that day, but neither I nor Michelle can definitively track down the day. It is just as well because while this is a great song, it is not a joyous engagement song. Bowie pleads with someone to be his wife, but he says nothing about the object of his affection. He doesn’t claim to be in love. He doesn’t claim his hoped-for fiancée is wonderful – or anything. He intriguingly sings in the second person, “sometimes you get so lonely, sometimes you get nowhere” and then he sings about how he “lived all over the world” but “left every place.” And that’s it. That’s all we get about his motivation for asking someone to share his life and be his wife. It is a self-centered cry of desperation. The video underscores the point: Bowie does not look attractive in this video. He looks deliberately nerdy and oddly uninterested. One common refrain in many of the tributes to Bowie I’ve read or heard since his passing is that he appealed to those who thought of themselves as different in some way. This is the love-song of the disaffected. It isn’t about mutuality or interdependence but a longing to be like those who have achieved those things. So maybe this isn’t such a good anniversary-of-engagement song after all. Album: Low