FEATURE:
The Lockdown Playlist
IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie photographed on the set of the 1976 film, The Man Who Fell to Earth/PHOTO CREDIT: Geoff Maccormack/Bonhams
Five Years: Artists Inspired by David Bowie – and Great Cover Versions of the Icon’s Work
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I may put out more than five features….
before 10th January - as that is when we mark five years since David Bowie died. I want to speak in more depth about Bowie’s influence in a wider sense, beyond music and artists who owe a debt to him. For this Lockdown Playlist, I wanted to bring together songs from artists who have definitely been inspired by Bowie; others that have cited him in an interview or their work contains some Bowie-esque elements. In the second half of the rundown, I have compiled some cover versions which are pretty good. I want to finish by quoting from an article from The Hollywood Reporter, who wrote of David Bowie’s legacy on 13th January (a few days after he died).
“Over the course of almost five decades, David Bowie transformed the very possibilities of pop music. Since his arrival at the dawn of the 1970s, every new movement that followed — punk, new wave, hip-hop, electronic, Goth, grunge, industrial — bore his stamp in some way. While age caught up with his peers, making them look old and irrelevant, or (best case) turning them into objects of nostalgia, Bowie's cool never faded; his impact only kept expanding.
But whatever method of expression he chose — from writing songs like "Rebel Rebel" and "Life on Mars?" to roles portraying Andy Warhol and Pontius Pilate — Bowie's work consistently returned to common themes: the sense of alienation, of being an outsider. His radical individualism helped give voice to several generations of misfits and weirdos, enabling "the children that you spit on" — to borrow a line from his 1971 hit "Changes" — to come out from the shadows, defiant and proud.
“He announced his bisexuality in the mid-1970s, long before such a declaration was widely tolerated. Having dived deep into black music on such R&B-drenched hits as "Fame" and "Young Americans" (he was one of the few white artists to appear on Soul Train), he was a strong advocate for African-American artists. He gave Luther Vandross his start as a recording artist and tapped Nile Rodgers to produce 1983's Let's Dance — which became his biggest-selling album in the U.S. — at a time when Rodgers was reeling from the anti-disco backlash. Perhaps most significantly, Bowie called out MTV during the network's early years for not playing videos by black artists. "I'm just floored by the fact that there are … so few black artists featured on it. Why is that?" he asked during an on-air interview in 1983.
This was the David Bowie who set a course for musicians, designers, actors, politicians and fans around the world. He was the original performer in a state of constant reinvention, paving the way for Prince, Madonna and Lady Gaga. "He was a one-off, a brilliant outlier," wrote Peter Gabriel on Facebook, "always exploring, challenging and inspiring anyone who wanted to push the boundaries of music, art, fashion and society”.
To show how far and wide Bowie’s influence has reached, music-wise, this Lockdown Playlist is about artists who have been influenced by Bowie, either through their original songs…
OR through cover versions of Bowie’s tracks.