Lyrics Series I 12 I Bowie’s funny lines
The Far Out online magazine seems to have nearly as many Bowie posts as this blog. A recent article, which you can link to here, listed what its writer thought were Bowie’s five funniest lyrics. It’s an interesting selection, including a few that are not inherently funny but evoked in the writer’s mind funny images. Without repeating the list (read it for yourself), I really only agree with one— “Under the moonlight, the serious moonlight,” from “Let’s Dance.” I remember my mother, who saw Bowie during his Serious Moonlight tour in 1983, thinking this line was hilarious, and I agree (though it’s a little tough to articulate exactly why).
So, less to disagree with the Far Out piece and more to supplement it, below is my top ten. But before I get to it, in order to limit myself to 10, I’m going to exclude any duplicates from the Far Out list, including, “serious moonlight.” Far Out mentions the infamous “Laughing Gnome”— Bowie wrote a few intentionally comedic songs, including that one and “Over the Wall We Go,” which are terrible. Just because they are supposed to be funny, doesn’t mean they are funny. Bowie also covered a few songs that were either supposed to be funny (“Buzz the Fuzz” or actually are funny (“Pablo Picasso;” “I Took A Trip on a Gemini Spaceship”). Since Bowie didn’t write the lyrics to those songs, they too are out. All that said, here’s my top 10 list:
1. “It’s not the side effects of the cocaine; I’m thinking that it must be love” from “Station to Station” (1976). Not a funny song at all, but nonetheless its hard for me to hear this line without thinking of the scene in Anchor Man that ends up in a performance of “Afternoon Delight.”
2. “Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am” from “Suffragette City” (1972). Just when you almost think this is a song that’s somehow about feminism, Bowie whips out this line. Since the song is so familiar, it might be hard to remember how hilarious this moment is the first time you heard it. To me, it remains funny.
3. “Fall Dog bombs the moon; what a dog” from “Fall Dog Bombs the Moon” (2003). This song was inspired by Dick Cheney of all people. The image of bombing the moon is, I think, supposed to convey unnecessary military excess, but again I think of an unrelated comedy — Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, in which the president, played by Tim Robbins actually proposes bombing the moon. When a general asks, “Sir, are you suggesting that we blow up the moon,” the Robbins’ character replies “Would you miss it?”
4. “Down in space it’s always 1982,” from “Slip Away” (2002). An inherently funny song inspired by the bizarre regional children’s show, The Uncle Floyd Show, Bowie manages to both be poignant and funny with this line. 1982 was the last year of Bowie the cutting edge subversive before he went mainstream with Let’s Dance and entered a phase he spent most of the rest of his career trying to live down. Still, on its own, the line is pretty funny.
5. “Even a glass eye in a duck’s ass can see that” from “A Big Hurt” (1991). Nothing more needs to be said about this one.
6. “I’m a phallus in pigtails” from “Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed” (1969). This is one of Bowie’s earlier examples of songs in which he makes strange claims about his own identity (culminating in, “I’m a Blackstar” in 2016). Though he’d make many such claims throughout his subsequent catalogue, he’d never again achieve this level of absurdity.
7. “ Who’d have ever thought of it; Who’d have ever dreamed; That a small town girl like you; Would be the boss of me” from “Boss of Me” (2013). I read somewhere that this song might have been inspired by Iman, which makes the line even funnier. But even without that interpretation, I think Bowie simply using the phrase, “boss of me” is pretty humorous.
8. “Zane zane zane, ouvre le chien” from The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) and “Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-change” from “You’ve Been Around” (1993). Bowie was being very self-referential in 1993, unexpectedly dropping in these lines originally from “All the Madmen” (1970) and “Changes” (1971) into his most recent songs. Inside jokes for his fans. The “Zane, Zane” line is doubly funny because it was nonsensical the first time, too (it apparently translates as, “open the dog”).
9. “We’ll love Aladdin Sane” from “Aladdin Sane (1973). While not his first or last pun, a lad, insane is surely Bowie’s premier example. Though this was surpassed by the album cover for Low, which features Bowie’s profile under the title, making it, “Low profile”— that was visual and doesn’t count as a lyric.
10. “Panic in Detroit; I asked for an autograph” from “Panic in Detroit” (1973) and, “When they pulled you out of the oxygen tent, you asked for the latest party” from “Diamond Dogs” (1974). I know, I know, I wrote about these lines last week. But they’re still funny.