Nicholas Pegg’s Least Favorite Bowie Songs
Nicholas Pegg possibly knows more about David Bowie than anyone else. His The Complete David Bowie has been my main reference guide for all the time I’ve been making my own contributions, via this blog and going all the way back to my 2016 song-a-day Facebook tribute. I cannot overstate my respect and indeed admiration for Pegg. he probably would say the same about Bowie. Pegg is not just a detached, academic observer of Bowie— he’s an unabashed, if exceptionally knowledgeable fan. Yet, like me, Pegg, as he wrote about one of the following songs, “has his limits.”
What follows are the highlights of Pegg’s commentary on Bowie’s lowlights. You might notice a pattern— a disproportionate number of these songs come from the album, Never Let Me Down as well as the Tin Machine period. Other than that, these are in alphabetical order:
“Across the Universe” (1975). “…widely regarded as one of the low points of Bowie’s glory years…”
“A Big Hurt” (1991) “Shouty vocals, squealing guitars, relentless drumming and a sexist lyric (including a bizarre reference to ‘a glass eye in a duck’s ass’) adds up to very little.”
“Buzz the Fuzz” (1970). “…it reaches a low with the disastrous lyric, ‘Love is so sensational/ when you fall in love with eyes dilational.’”
“Crack City” (1989). “‘Crack City’ is ill served by its hoary rock n’ roll pretensions and a ridiculous outburst of swearing (pardon me for coming over all Mary Whitehouse, but this is the track on which you can hear David Bowie shouting ‘piss,’ ‘assholes,’ ‘buttholes,’ and ‘fuckheads’— the cumulative effect is sadly not the desired result of appearing mature and serious).”
“Day-In Day-Out (1987) “Everything that’s initially promising but ultimately infuriating about Never Let Me Down is encapsulated in its opening track and debut single…its a slab of 1980s soft rock which now sounds incredibly dated…”
“Do Anything You Say” (1966). “…it has the distinction of being the first record credited simply to ‘David Bowie.’ Sadly this is about all that distinguishes this unimaginative R&B jilted love song, which betrays little promise by comparison with some of Bowie’s other 1966 material.” (Note from me— that’s saying something!)
“God Only Knows” (1984) “Mired in a baleful morass of turgid strings and awful saxophones, Bowie croons his way haplessly through perhaps the worst track he ever recorded.”
“Heaven’s In Here” (1989). “…Like Tin Machine in general, ‘Heaven’s In Here’ fails to live up to its initial promise, degenerating into an unwieldy blustering racket and seriously outstaying its welcome.”
“If I’m Dreaming My Life” (2009). “…its one of the less satisfactory experiments on ‘hours…’, a turgid interlude between the melodic beauty of ‘Survive’ and ‘Seven.’
“If There Is Something” (1991). “The sound of Bowie, against a backing of industrial noise, yelling that he’s going to ‘sit in the garden, grow potatoes by the score,’ simply beggars description.”
“The King of Stamford Hill” (1988) “Dispensable.”
“New York’s In Love” (1987) “This strong contender for the Never Let Me Down wooden spoon is a duff space-filler which makes a half-hearted stab at a prosopopoeic rendering of New York City as a living character…” Note from me: I don’t even understand this sentence…but its not good!
“One Shot” (1991). “After the early promise of ‘Baby Universal’ Tin Machine II returns to its predecessor’s unlovely cock-rock instincts with this unspectacular grunge-up, outstaying its welcome with an excessively tiresome guitar break while the lyrics bitter account of a loveless liaison veer’s uncomfortably towards misogyny.”
“Over The Wall We Go” (1966) “Those acquainted with the obscure backwaters of Bowie’s work are aware that there are some songs which leave ‘The Laughing Gnome” standing. ‘Over The Wall We Go’ is one such, and even your present guide, who can find it in his heart to praise Never Let Me Down, has his limits.”
“Pretty Thing” (1989) “…this is sadly one of the least engaging tracks on Tin Machine..the track degenerates into one of Tin Machine’s blustering rock-outs— and the laddish, sexist lyrics are beyond the pale.”
“Shining Star (Making My Love)” (1987) “After the flawed excellence of ‘Glass Spider,’ Never Let Me Down gets into trouble with this, the first in a series of insipid and featureless tracks which drag the album through its protracted demise.”
“Sorry” (1991) …”marginally less hideous than ‘Stateside’ …”
“Stateside” (1991) “…Tin Machine’s darkest hour…undignified monstrosity…a close contender with Tonight’s ‘God Only Knows’ as the very worst of Bowie’s recorded legacy.”
“That’s Motivation” (1986). “The melody is nonexistent and the result is a meandering anti-climax.”
“Too Dizzy” (1987) “…quite simply one of the feeblest tracks on even this album, a shabby mid-eighties pop rocker laying a tiresome guitar break and a yakkety-yak saxophone over a chord sequence almost identical to ‘Zeroes.’”
“Without You” (1983). “…probably the low point of Let’s Dance, a throwaway love song deploying Bowie’s least-inspiring croon and a lyric that half-heartedly clutches at the intriguing friction of the album’s better songs.”
“You Can’t Talk” (1991). “…a tuneless window-rattler…”