Day 63 | The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell

My thesis on the pretty thing sequence is that Bowie goes from fantastic celebration with 1971’s “Oh, You Pretty Things,” to realistic consequential ugliness with 1989’s “Pretty Thing” to confused resignation with this song, 1999’s “The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell.” The first and final songs employ supernatural imagery. I think the first time it is because Bowie was seeing the emerging post-hippy youth culture to be so unique as to appear like aliens or spirits to everyone else. This time, the same former pretty things are so confused and worn out as to be in a surrealistic blur. Although Bowie famously shifted personas again and again, he frequently would reference his own past. So I take this song as a kind of internal struggle- he and his contemporaries were no longer pretty things. That whole act had worn thin long ago, and the consequence of the acting was burnout…but he couldn’t quite let it go, thus the song. Album: Hours