Year In Review: Top 10 Posts

I have been writing this blog since 2018, following a project I spontaneously launched on Facebook in 2016, the day David Bowie died, in which I posted one of his songs every day with commentary for a year. That exercise got a fair amount of attention, and after its conclusion a friend of mine who does web design, Bill Tuman, designed this blog and urged me to keep writing about Bowie. So, I did. For years, I would post on this blog on and off, doing little if anything to draw attention to it. A Facebook post shows up in friends’ feeds, but a blog requires visitors to seek it out. So I was mostly writing for myself.

I write because I like to write. It helps me think better. And I like writing about Bowie because I like David Bowie. His is the only human voice I have heard every day (almost every day) for the last 35 years or so. I could have written about politics on a daily basis, but that topic intersects too much with my professional life and not only would I feel restricted in what I could write, but I also need something else in my life. Moreover, Bowie has left us all with much to do. One of the features of this blog is my “cover of the week,” in which I feature other artists’ new interpretations of Bowie’s songs, like he gave them clay to mold. I’m not a musician, but Bowie also left us cryptic lyrics to decipher, images to unpack, concepts to contemplate and much more.

Bowie left us so much more that there has developed what I have come to think of as an international Bowie community. There are Bowie scholars, cover bands, curators, artists who focus on Bowie, conventions, magazines, and perhaps most precious of all an informal network of Bowie “alumni”— people who worked with Bowie, many of whom carry the flame for Bowie even while moving on with their own careers. I entered this community this year as a result of this blog.

At some point during the pandemic lockdown, I decided to commit myself to writing a daily blog post as kind of a mental discipline amidst (Bowie’s favorite topic)— isolation. Earlier this year, a post I wrote last year was noticed. I had come across a mashup video of a Bowie song and a Talking Heads song put on YouTube by mashup artist DoM, and wrote about it. Months after the post, DoM found it and sent me a message of appreciation. We struck up an electronic correspondence that led me to ask if I could “interview” him, and he agreed. I sent DoM some questions, which he answered, and I turned that into a post.

I was blown away. DoM lives in France— I live in the United States. The concept that a person in France would happen upon one of my posts, which, while public, was not promoted in any way, was very exciting to me. I wondered if others would be interested in participating in interviews. Turns out the answer was yes, and I’ll tell the rest of that story in coming days. But that ignited the more public phase of this blog.

For much of the rest of this month, I’m going to post a series of “year in review” reflections. I thought I’d start off with a review of the most popular posts overall, to sort of establish a frame for what the blog is about. I should note that I didn’t start tracking interaction with the blog until April, so the stats I have do not cover all of the past twelve months. Also, I launched a YouTube channel in support of the blog for the weekly interview segment, and that channel now gets more active use than the blog itself (so, if the interview numbers seem low, many more people see the interviews directly via the YouTube channel than via the blog, and again I’ll get to that in a future post).

So all that said, below are the top 10 posts of the year in terms of views. You can link to the original posts by clicking on the names of the posts:

1. The Hidden Lyrics of “Ashes to Ashes,” 1,516 views. This post, based on information I read in Adam Steiner’s excellent book about Scary Monsters, which was called, Silhouettes and Shadows, revealed the barely audible words Bowie speaks during the song that are obscured by his more audibly prominent singing. This information was not new (and hey, it’s all there in the song), but I had never picked up on the words or come across the fact that they were even part of the song before I read Adam’s book, and based on feedback I got from this post, it seems that a lot of people didn’t know before reading my blog.

2. Top Ten Most Misplaced Bowie Songs, 1,214 views. This was a somewhat controversial post largely because of my use of the word, “misplaced.” My point was to identify songs that while not necessarily bad, seemed inconsistent with the albums they are on. You know, like “Aladdin Sane” on Aladdin Sane (I got heat for that one!)

3. Exclusive Interview: Political Consultant Melissa DeRosa, 563 views. This interview brought together my blog project with my professional life, so I think it attracted audiences from both worlds. Interestingly, this was the interview that far and away got the most views via the blog itself, though several other more music-oriented interviews have received more views directly via YouTube.

4. The Hidden Song within “Rebel Rebel,” 351 views. I got some negative feedback for this post, along the lines that the title was clickbait and the post itself failed to deliver. I think readers were expecting something like they got with the aforementioned “Ashes to Ashes” post, but instead got an appreciation for a part of “Rebel Rebel” that Bowie often dropped from live performances but, to me, is like its own song.

5. Exclusive Interview: Earl Slick, 341 views. I still can’t believe I interviewed Earl Slick! I mean, I listen to something or other he’s playing on almost every day. This is also a good example of how the YouTube video of the interview got many more views than the blog post— more than 1000 people have viewed this interview via YouTube.

6. In defense of Tonight, 325 views. Another slightly controversial post. I heard both from those who said Tonight needs no defense, and, from the other side that it is indefensible

7. Cover of the Week: Laura Crow and Him cover “The Man Who Sold the World”, 273 views. Far and away the most viewed “Cover of the Week” post.

8. Ava Cherry’s Version of “Sweet Thing,” 255 views. I also can’t believe I interviewed Ava Cherry. Much as with the Earl Slick interview, many more people saw Ava’s two interviews via YouTube than via the blog. Interestingly, of my Ava-related blog posts, this one got more views than the actual interviews. I didn’t know that she recorded “Sweet Thing,” and it turned out a lot of other people didn’t know this either. It’s beautiful!

9. About that AI “Space Oddity” video, 246 views. The topic of AI arouses passions and opinions. Although the post itself didn’t get much negative feedback, the AI video did. I think it has since been taken down, so forgive me in advance if you click to the post and the video is gone.

10. About that Starman video, 241 views. This post was not about an AI video, but a posthumous “official” video that used footage of Bowie singing during the Ziggy period, filmed by the late Mick Rock.

So, those are the top blog posts. Next up, I will review the top ten “covers of the week” …