The 15 best cover versions of David Bowie
1. Wild is the Wind (1976, in the original by Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin, 1957)
Bowie delivers the most beautiful version of the Schmachtfetzen to date almost 20 years after the original was created. The singer’s cocaine phase can be clearly heard here-he breaks, jubilates and cries. What a final act at the end of the “Station to Station” album.
The 15 best cover versions of David Bowie
2. China Girl (1983, originally by Iggy Pop and David Bowie, 1977)
Strictly speaking, of course, no “real” cover version! Bowie had composed the song together with Iggy Pop – but it appeared for the first time on its album “The Idiot”, and thus before Bowie’s version. Six years later, producer Nile Rodgers set off, prepared it for the disco and played the Chinese melody on the guitar.
After publication, Bowie’s “China Girl” became a top hit in the course of the “Let’s Dance” wave, despite the risky change of mood in the middle. The danceable piece over racism and imperialism broke all chart conventions, the word “swastika” swings through the stanza like an ax.
The 15 best cover versions of David Bowie
3. Kingdom Come (1980, in the original by Tom Verlaine, 1979)
Bowie may be disrespectful – most cover versions are always published at a reasonable time interval to the original – because only one year after Tom Verlaines song appears. This version does not differ so much from that of the television singer. Of course, Bowie’s piece of Verlaine, of course, was contained, it should be included on his extremely successful album “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)”. In addition to the hits “Ashes to Ashes” and “Fashion”, “Kingdom Come” in 1980 does not have to hide, on the contrary, this is one of the few contributions in which Bowie’s backing tape and Fripp does not freak out while playing, but keeps the trail.
The 15 best cover versions of David Bowie
4. My Death (1973, in the original “La Mort” by Jaques Brel, 1959)
Bowie was not the first English -language musician to cover Brel. Scott Walker had already interpreted “My Death” and “Amsterdam” on “Scott” from 1967 – Bowie should also take care of both pieces. Rod McKuen, later Eric Blau and Mort Shuman translated the French text from “La Mort” into English. “”My Death Waits Like a Bible Truth/ at the Funeral of My Youth ‘-Bowie played the song on his 1973 tour when he got enough of his art figure of Ziggy Stardust. “My Death” illustrated the “death” of Ziggy as clearly as Bowie’s own “Rock’n’Roll Suicide”. Unfortunately, the acoustic guitar version is only available in two live versions, available on “Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture Soundtrack” and “Live Santa Monica ’72”.
The 15 best cover versions of David Bowie
5. Don’t Look Down (1984, original by Iggy Pop, 1979)
The original appeared on Iggy Pops Platte “New Values” in 1979 and is a co-composition with Stooges guitarist James Williamson. Bowie makes an enthusiastic, yet sad-sounding reggae pop out of the moody blues-Schunkler; Completed with the title track “Tonight”, also a kind of reggae light, the Skank make the keyboards here. With cover versions, Bowie often steals the show as if he wanted the last word. The best examples are “Kingdom Come” (see above), 1980 only published one year after Tom Verlaines Song, or “Criminal World” (below). In “Don’t Look Down”, Bowie is now telling the story of a walker in New York who visits Rudolph Valentino’s grave.
6. Try some, buy some (2003, in the original by George Harrison, sung by Ronnie Spector, 1971)
With the “Wall of Sound”, which Phil Spector set up in detail for George Harrison at the latest (the Beatle then published his own version in 1973 on “Living in the Material World”) Bowie was able to record it. What a bombastic charges: This protest song against capitalism also stands out on Bowie’s own album “Reality”, you feel when you listen to the singer from stanza to stanza through increasing gates. Bowie interprets Harrison’s slightly silky vocals with a little quieter doubts.
7. Let’s Spend The Night Together (1973, originally from the Rolling Stones, 1967)
The friendship with the Stones (and especially hunting) should inevitably bear fruit, six years after the original version was published, Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane” album was ready. Ziggy puts on the pace again properly here, pianist Mike Garson makes the Derwisch. The cover piece also brings a new, final stanza: “They Said We Were Too Young / Our Kind of Love was no fun / but our love come from above! / Let’s make love / hoo!”
8. Criminal World (1983, in the original by Metro, 1977)
All other five album tracks from “Let’s Dance” drop somewhat behind the almost 20-minute, monumental opening gala of the maxi versions of “Modern Love”, “China Girl” and “Let’s Dance”. In addition to a newly recorded version of “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” – the original produced by Giorgio Moroder was not allowed on the plate – this piece is particularly convincing. “Criminal World”, published by the band Metro in 1977, learns a humid grade grade through radio bass and Stevie Ray Vaughans like a moaning. According to Wikipedia, the song was used by the US military as a torture tool-in 1989 you wanted to get the Panamaic General Noriega out of his villa, by boxing.
9. I took a trip on a gemini spaceship (2002, in the original by Legendary Stardust Cowboy, 1968)
Not knowing the original is not a shame. Norman Carl Odam, as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy actually means, works with his rock’n’roll songs more in off. Bowie was an early fan of the Texan. Allegedly, the name “Ziggy Stardust” even refers to this model. The template, somewhat bored, a chunken country pop with added space pops, papped Bowie accordingly: its spaceship becomes a rocket, wind players set the next stage. At the beginning of the millennium, Bowie was in cover mood, whether with his own earlier pieces (“Toy”) or on the “Heathen” album, where the “Spaceship” landed next to Neil Young and the Pixies.
10. I know It’s Gonna Happen Someday (1993, original by Morrissey, 1992)
Again, one of the typical Bowie attacks: just one year after publication (on Morrissey’s “Your Arsenal”), he launched his own, stereo-effect-soaked version. Incidentally, the “Spiders” guitarist Mick Ronson was a mediating person between the two musicians, who also worked for the ex-Smith front man. Bowie himself made fun of his version: “It’s me singing Morrissey Singing Me”, “Totally Camp”. But what does it make to start now how unfair the “Black Tie White Noise” album was judged anyway?
11. God Only Knows (1984, originally from the Beach Boys, 1966)
Since the late nineties, when the Beach Boys were rediscovered, every pop mocker has been relevant to the influence of the “Pet Sounds” album. Bowie was there early with his “Tonight” version of 1984. Even those who do not appreciate their work of the eighties cannot be found around: they have rarely sung as urgently as here. A little bit of a small finger was just the decision to swap the stanzas one and two. Instead of “I May not Always Love You”, the song begins with “If you should ever Leave Me”. “Tonight” was created in the hustle and bustle, Bowie wanted to continue to clear after “Let’s Dance”, which is why this album contained so many cover versions instead of its own compositions. But they were all good.
12. It’s hard to be a Saint in the City (1976, originally from Bruce Springsteen, 1973)
In 1975 and 1976, Bowie was in Funkrock fever, his version of the Springsteen song (published on his debut “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ”) is therefore a bit muscular and longer, but similarly playful. A rather faithful cover. At that time it was never published, it would have been right at “Station to Station”. In 1989 it was added to the “Sound and Vision” box.
13. Nature Boy (2002, originally by Eden Ahbez, 1947)
Nat King Cole made the Proto-Hippie Eden Ahbez in 1948 (bourgeois George Alexander Aberle) written song popular. For BAZ Luhrmann’s film “Moulin Rouge!” Bowie recorded two different versions. A dramatic burlesque, orchestral; as well as the more well-known “techno” version he favored by him, in collaboration with Massive Attack. It was actually clear that Bowie would take care of this standard song-there would be versions of Sinatra, Miles Davis and Tony Bennett. But just on his Art. Once classic, once modern.
14. Alabama Song (1980, originally by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, 1927)
In 1980, Bowie was back in stage mode, he was the theater man, whom he had most recently played in the middle of the middle of the middle. On the Broadway, he now embodied the “elephant man”, and for “Ashes to Ashes” he was the pierrot. But he has always been admirers from Brecht and Weill. The creation of his version of the “Alabama Song” is strange, originally from “rise and fall of the city of Mahagonny”. Bowie wanted to get out of his contract with the record company RCA, so this last agreed single recording. As a B-side, he resumed his classic “Space Oddity” (in a terribly reduced version) so that someone buys someone. A little later, “Alabama Song” hiked around the back of other singles: “Ashes to Ashes” and “Crystal Japan”.
15. White Light/White Heat (1973, in the original by The Velvet Underground, 1968)
Bowie was a real stalker of this aggressive song, which of course acted on drugs. He loved Velvet Underground, Lou Reed brought to the stage as early as 1972, before in the credits of the 1971 album “Hunky Dory” for the influence of VU on his own “Queen Bitch”. Originally, it was supposed to create a studio version of “White Light/White Heat” on the cover album “Pin Ups”. It was not until 1983, when the live plate “Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture Soundtrack” of the 73 tour was available, was the song in a Bowie version on the market. He played the song live until the last tour in 2004.