I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Album: #108
Album Title: Hunky Dory
Artist: David Bowie
Genre: Art Rock, Pop Rock
Recorded: Trident Studios, London, England
Released: December, 1971
My age at release: Five
How familiar was I with it before this week: Fairly
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #88, rising 20 spots
My age at release: Five
How familiar was I with it before this week: Fairly
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #88, rising 20 spots
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Life On Mars?
As this ongoing nine-and-a-half-year album project suggests, I am fascinated by music. I’m drawn to the pull of a strong melody, the jolt of an unexpected and clever chord change, or the electricity that happens when extraordinarily talented musicians lock into something that feels almost transcendent. However, the thing that truly defines my love of music is most often found in the lyrics.
I’ve also realized that I’m drawn to songs that don’t give everything away. The ones that feel layered, allusive and sometimes surreal. Songs where a line sends your thoughts somewhere else. Perhaps to an obscure reference from a book or to a moment in history, a lyric or even a songwriter's catalogue. I've sometimes joked that I like lyrics that make me do homework. Sometimes that statement means actual research, but often it is just describes the time I will spend turning the words over and over in my head.
Some songs stick with you long enough that they feel like lifelong companions. They are the ones that linger, shift, and change over time. Songs that ask you to participate with or ponder their ambiguity. There are songs that resonated with you at age 17 because you thought you understood them, but don’t really become clear until you’re 45. And then you hear them at 60, and everything takes on a new shape.
Among my favourites is Life On Mars?, from David Bowie's fourth studio record, Hunky Dory. The song has everything I love about music. The melody borders on the theatrical, but it never quite settles. It features excellent musicians, as Bowie has always bolstered his art with legendary talent. This record includes the players who will soon become "The Spiders of Mars" on his next record. Ziggy Stardust (#35 on The 500) They include Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey. The opening piano for Life On Mars? was improvised in the studio by keyboard virtuoso and rock journeyman Rick Wakeman.
According to Wakeman:
"One of the most memorable and enjoyable experiences I had in the studio was the week I spent with David Bowie and his band in Trident Studios recording Hunky Dory. David gave me free reign to play what I liked on the piano to his wonderful songs and that was particularly prevalent when it came to Life On Mars? when he just said 'do what you like' and I did." (Link to conversation and an acoustic piano version by Wakeman)
Underneath that wonderful melody, the chord progression quietly subverts expectation. Instead of neatly resolving, it keeps shifting, moving through changes that feel just unfamiliar enough to keep you off balance. The result is something both beautiful and unsettling. A complete breakdown of the "line cliches" and "functional harmony" in Life On Mars? can be found here, if you're a nerd (like me) for that kind of stuff.
So, by my entirely subjective and deeply unofficial checklist of “incredible music,” we’ve officially checked the first three requirements.
- Engaging Melody
- Clever Chord Progressions
- Excellent Musicianship
And the lyrics? Well, to fully appreciate what Bowie was trying to accomplish we need to rewind the clock to 1967 when he was a struggling musician. In fact, he had only recently rebranded himself as Bowie, given that his birth name, David Jones, could easily be confused with pop music celebrity Davy Jones of The Monkees.
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| Monkee and '60's heartthrob Davy Jones. |
Bowie had just released his first, self-titled record which was lauded by critics but remained commercially unsuccessful. His publishing company, Essex Music, had just received a copy of Comme D'Habitude by Claude François -- a song that eventually became Frank Sinatra’s smash recording of My Way.
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| Album cover for Comme D'Habitude by Claude François. |
Bowie was approached to write the English lyrics to the melody and demos of his version, Even A Fool Learns To Love, can still be found online. However, the French publisher rejected Bowie's version and it was Canada’s Paul Anka whose words made their way to crooner Sinatra. The song became an English language hit in March, 1969.
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| Album cover for My Way, as performed by Frank Sinatra |
By 1970, Bowie was touring the United States, travelling from New York to Los Angeles by bus, a journey that nudged him back into writing. This time, he leaned away from rock and roll toward something more theatrical. Back at Trident Studios in London, he revisited his failed attempt at My Way, slowly reshaping those ideas into Life on Mars?, which Bowie jokingly dubbed "My Way On Mars" in a later interview.
In fact, Bowie gives a cheeky nod to Sinatra on the back cover of the Hunky Dory album cover. The words "*inspired by Frankie" appear next to the track listing for Life on Mars?
Which brings me back to those lyrics that still entrance and fascinate me decades after first hearing them. They sidestep easy interpretation and drift through a series of surreal, loosely connected scenes that blend everyday frustration with strange imagery and seemingly disconnected references.
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| Album cover for the single, Life On Mars? released 18 months after Hunky Dory, when Bowie had become much more famous. |
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| Back cover and close-up of dedication on Hunky Dory. |
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| The original handwritten lyrics to Life On Mars? |
At its most literal, the song follows a bored, frustrated young girl who escapes escalating hostility in her family home by retreating to a movie theatre. Once there, she finds herself alone and realizes that the world on the screen is "a saddening bore" -- just as strange, disconnected, and unsatisfying as her own.
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| Opening lyrics to Life On Mars? |
However, there is so much more present in those words. The lyrics are a mirror and a cultural commentary that work as well today as they did in 1971. The lines are sometimes fragmented, humorously exaggerated, and, sometimes, seemingly meaningless. The images pile up, jumping from one idea to the next, until the story stops feeling literal and starts to feel emotional. By the time Bowie asks, “Is there life on Mars?”, it doesn’t sound like a question about existence on a different planet, it sounds like a question about whether there’s anything more than this very moment we find ourselves in.
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| Album jacket for single of Life On Mars? |
Is there something more than this?
And maybe that’s the real brilliance of Life on Mars?. The song isn’t finished. It’s still being written... by Bowie, by culture, by you and me – by anyone who presses play and lets those first piano chords tilt the world just slightly off its axis.
And maybe that’s the real brilliance of Life on Mars?. The song isn’t finished. It’s still being written... by Bowie, by culture, by you and me – by anyone who presses play and lets those first piano chords tilt the world just slightly off its axis.
