“Thursday’s Child” (1999) Updated

From time to time older video links stop working in some of my blog posts, so I use the occasion to update my comments, which is the case here. The sad thing is that the official video is pretty creative and is still very much alive on YouTube, but I can’t get the link to work. If you haven’t seen it, track it down. Since it’s not here, I’m not going to comment on that video. This is a live version of the song, which sounds pretty much like the studio version from the album, “hours…”

Nicholas Pegg’s The Complete David Bowie devotes considerable space to discussing the origin of the song’s name, which in part has to do with the singer Eartha Kit, who had a song of the same name and used the term as the title for her autobiography. I think that’s all a distraction. The song is not about Eartha Kit. I’m not familiar enough with Eartha Kit’s music to know if there’s some obscure thematic connection, but this is a song about a middle aged man reflecting on whether he’s made the most of his life.

“Hours…” marked a shift for Bowie, who was 52 at the time of its release. He basically made the decision to stop trying to appeal to a younger audience. Though he didn’t completely make the break on this album, from this point on his music would become more introspective and reflective. In that respect, “Thursday’s Child” is really the heart of the album.

I’m not going to simply reproduce the lyrics, but take away the refrain and the song is a lament from a man who thinks he’s done his best but never achieved his potential (reminiscent of, “I’ve never done good things, I’ve never done bad things”). He acknowledges a bifurcation in his life and is hopeful that he now has a chance to let go of his past and do something better. The album cover is evokes these themes, depicting the “new” Bowie holding an exhausted— or dead— version of his most recent previous iteration. More broadly, it’s hard not to think about how Bowie went from cutting-edge superstar to has-been at some point in the mid-1980s. His reputation had still not recovered by 1999, so he could really have seen his professional life as being of two parts, and this song, in a sense, is a pledge to pivot yet again.

But as with much of Bowie’s music, not everything falls neatly into place (which is a deliberate reference to the lyrics). The refrain about being Thursday’s child— if it made sense to Bowie, I don’t think it’s supposed to make sense to us. He seems to be going somewhere, then he declares, “only for you I don’t retreat, that I was Thursday’s child.” Someone can make the case for how that conclusion is in line with what seems to be a linear narrative building to that point, but I can’t make that case.

Here’s what I originally wrote on day 53 of my daily tribute, March 3, 2016:

Bowie said at one point that the name of this song was inspired by Ertha Kit’s autobiography of the same name, but they probably both derived from a line in an old nursery rhyme, “Monday’s Child.” In the rhyme, Thursday’s child “has far to go.” The song is about someone who has tried hard all his life, hasn’t achieved his goals but has new hope since finding someone new. So it takes place at a particular moment after the turn from pessimism to optimism but before landing at achievement. Thursday’s child has far to go. And the other reason I selected this song is because it’s Thursday. Album: Hours