Lena Hall covers “Five Years”

This is the third video I’ve posted from Lena Hall’s EP, Obsessed: David Bowie, which is part of her Obsessed series. I’m posting it because I like the project and her performance, and like that she did videos for the five songs she covered.

Although the instrumental aspect of this version of the song is distinct, as if Hall’s voice, the arrangement is fairly faithful to the version we’re familiar with at the beginning of Ziggy Stardust. It’s an odd song to record stand-alone as I usually think of it as being of a piece with the rest of the album. I’ve usually seen it interpreted as part of the Ziggy story, but as Hall essentially points out by recording it on its own, it really doesn’t have anything obviously to do with Ziggy Stardust at all.

The picture Bowie paints is of a world in chaos upon hearing the news that the end is (relatively) near. But chaos for Bowie includes everything from a young mother attacking her own children to someone obliviously drinking milkshakes, to the observer/narrator who sort of glides through “all the fat/skinny people,” narrating the scene while suffering a headache. The narrator never realized he’d need so many people, but as he sees what everyone else is doing, he sees that everyone else is doing their own thing.

I kind of think Lena Hall just liked the sound of it, though.