The Secret Lyrics of “Ashes to Ashes”

Another insight I picked up from Adam Steiner’s book about my favorite album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), which is titled, Silhouettes and Shadows, is that the album’s best-known song, “Ashes to Ashes,” contains secret lyrics. Having listened to this song for years and years, over and over again, I never picked up on these barely-audible lines:

“No everlasting aesthetic…
Songs that please the ear can leave the mind blown
I was hoping to kick but the planet was glowing
And I was ready to go in ‘74”

Bowie speaks these lines nearly a minute into the song, around the time he’s more prominently singing, “But I’m hoping to kick but the planet it’s glowing.” You can hear something— a muttering. In other parts of the song, a slightly more audible but still hard-to discern spoken word seems to repeat what Bowie is singing in the foreground. Perhaps because later when this low voice repeats, “I’ve never done good things; I’ve never done bad things,” I might have assumed that whatever’s being muttered earlier is that same thing as Bowie is singing. It isn’t. After learning what he’s actually saying, this seems obvious. But it’s still hard to hear the actual words.

But knowing what the actual words are…well, like he says, this song that pleases the ear leaves my mind blown. Especially the final line about being ready to go in ‘74. I think 1974 is when Bowie’s drug use veered into addiction, which is what the song is about. Major Tom is Bowie’s alter ego, and “Ashes to Ashes” is essentially an update about what happened to Bowie in the time since his first hit, “Space Oddity.”

I’m also struck by the, “no everlasting aesthetic” line. Impermanence is a constant for Bowie, from his ever-shifting look and sound to a kind of worldview infused in his songs. In one of his most optimistic songs, “The Wedding,” written for his wedding to Iman and placed on Black Tie White Noise, Bowie sings, “She’s not mine for eternity.” I mention this here because even in celebrating the happiest of moments for Bowie, he’s suggesting that his time of marital bliss is on the clock. In that case, he’s saying to make the most of the time they would have— “til death do we part” is different than, “eternity.”

I’m also, oddly, thinking of an even more obscure line— because it doesn’t actually exist. I misremember an exchange between Bowie’s character and the vampire played by Catherine Deneuve— Bowie, who had become vampire but was suddenly, rapidly aging, says to Deneuve, “I thought you said forever,” to which she responds, “More or less.” Although the line doesn’t actually appear, that’s what the movie is about— no everlasting aesthetic.

For me, these hidden lines are an exciting discovery. I remember somewhat shortly after becoming familiar with Scary Monsters many years ago picking up on the line, “but the little green wheels are following me; oh no, not again.” I don’t know why I didn’t hear those lines immediately, but I didn’t. The sensation of “discovering” them made them more intriguing. I’m experiencing the same sensation now.

Going back to the line about being ready to go in ‘74– the other intriguing thing about this hidden lyric is that while it seems pretty clearly a reference to Bowie’s addiction nearly killing him, there’s some degree of ambiguity. By most accounts I’ve read, he wasn’t at the absolute low point of his addiction until about 1976. Could it be that “ready to go” doesn’t mean, “ready to die?” Is he saying he was just getting started?

On the other hand, this line puts the more clearly heard line about hoping to kick in a different context. I’ve long thought he was saying that he was hoping to kick the habit. He repeats this line both in the overt part of the song and the concurrent barely-audible part. But in the context of the secret lyrics, “hoping to kick” seems more likely to mean that he was hoping to die, and was ready to do just that back in 1974.

It might take me another 40 years to figure it all out.

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I didn’t want to post the classic video for this post because it appears elsewhere on this blog. Instead, I listened to several remixes and live versions. I settled on this one because the lines in question are still in the mix— but they are missing from many of the versions I heard, including Bowie himself singing the song live. In one later performance, Bowie omitted the entire part of the song where these secret lines would be heard in the background. As it is, you’ll have trouble making them out. But they are there.