“The warmth was in the melodies, the humor, the observation, the possibility”: revisit asarahlarson’s 2016 essay on loving David Bowie, who was born on this day in 1947.
from “Tonight” , thrilled me. This morning, in one of my Bowie commiserations, a longtime close friend said that she could imagine whole worlds around each of his songs, because Bowie’s lyrics were so visual and narrative. I suddenly remembered that in seventh grade she’d had a vivid nightmare about “Cat People.”
I explored backward in Bowie’s catalogue as I grew into being ready for it. Discovering his world, that richly strange visual and narrative world, meant entering a more adult world. A friend told me a few weeks ago that he first heard “Changes” at a school assembly about puberty, which sounds like something thaton the kids in “Freaks and Geeks.” But, of course, so many of us reached out to that song, and its cohort, when we were entering adolescence, without realizing the literalism of it.
But “Changes,” “Changes.” It sounded like an existential crisis, an appeal to personal bravery, a reassuring anthem of empathy. Its lyrics ranged from poetic, almost maudlin to plainspoken to just right , as did the music—the comforting descending piano, the blanket of saxophone. It was a song you could listen to over and over again, as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old kid, and feel spoken to and gratified yet somehow wanting more.
On “Changes One,” and the albums that the songs came from, which I wouldn’t fully explore until later, Bowie sang respectfully about those children quite aware of what they’re going through, and about so many others—Major Tom, and his wife, and ground control; John, and his female rival who turns the singer on; Rebel Rebel and her torn dress; the young Americans, innocently screwing themselves into oblivion; egomaniacal Ziggy Stardust and the kids who killed him with their love.
As I became a bona-fide teen-ager, continuing to explore Bowie, along with the work of other musicians in and near his realm—Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople, T. Rex, the Pixies—broadened and deepened my world. My friends loved it all, too. The gentle, brilliant “Hunky Dory,” for example, where he sang tenderly to the kooks and the pretty things and the girl with the mousy hair.
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