The Top 10 David Bowie Songs.

David Bowie left us with a wealth of classic songs—hit singles & deep album cuts alike. But when you tally up his most classic records, it's remarkable to see how almost all of them were major hits (either upon initial or re-release). Of the list that follows, only two didn't make the Top 20 in either the UK or US ("Changes" & "Ziggy Stardust")—& those two songs are actually better-known than many of the other songs that were hits.

For this list, I left out any collaborations, such as Bowie & Queen's classic "Under Pressure," for I wanted these songs to represent 100% Bowie compositions. Likewise, I left out Bowie covers, such as his versions of The Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend The Night Together," Eddie Floyd's "Knock On Wood," or Bruce Springsteen's "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City." Finally, I chose songs in the versions that Bowie himself recorded; thus, a song like "All The Young Dudes" didn't make the list because, although the famous Mott The Hoople version is phenomenal, Bowie's own solo version on it is less than stunning.

These are songs that represent Bowie the singer & Bowie the songwriter, his own unique style as expressed through sound & vision.

& there's no better place to begin than—

10. "Sound & Vision" (Low, 1977; #3 UK, #69 US).

David Bowie's manifesto for his career—a true artist, working in sound & vision. Appropriately, the song finds him at the forefront of cutting-edge art rock, with an assist from muse/co-conspirator Brian Eno. It is a rich yet textured array of funky electronic sounds that seem to be powered by a lovely mechanical hiss that sounds like a factory engine releasing steam. For me, it is this sound that makes the record, a milestone where man vs. machine became not just about computers & outer space, but music & our inner-spaces. All of this gives way to a small set of elusive, brittle lyrics that seem to hide as much as they reveal. Such is the artistic process, & no song summed it up better—at least for the artist who was David Bowie. 

9. "Modern Love" (Let's Dance, 1983; #2 UK, #14 US).

For all of the styles & genres that Bowie embraced—rock, pop, show tunes, glam, soul, art-rock, electronic, & countless others—"Modern Love" is the closest he ever came to gospel. The song stands out as the most exciting track out of an overrated "comeback" album that effortlessly builds off of its own energy like the finest church music. It's at once a funky '80s dance tune & an ancient call-&-response spiritual that uses the spirit of sacred music to power a song about secular love. To do so is well & good, but the song works because it simply sounds so infectious. It's one of those rare dance songs—like Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons' "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)" or ABBA's "Dancing Queen"—that has the power to pull you out of whatever context may have initially surrounded it—& onto the dance floor.

8. "Changes" (Hunky Dory, 1972; #49 UK [2016 re-release], #41 US [1975 re-release]).

If "Sound & Vision" was Bowie's artistic manifesto, then "Changes" was his initial statement of purpose, a portrait of the artist as a young kook. Looking out at on the brink of the 1970s, it is tempting to say that it was Bowie who most saw the onslaught of styles & conflicts that were to come in popular music—or, perhaps, that he was the most prepared to deal with them. Thus, by the decade's end, he was the artist who had best weathered it all (with the possible exception of fellow iconoclast Neil Young) in terms of artistic consistency & commercial appeal. Very few could have weathered hard rock & disco so well, let alone punk & the postpunk music that was soon to be known as New Wave. "Changes" seems to posit that in this river of pop music, the only constant is change. Is there any other reason why it has become so engrained as a classic rock anthem despite never being much of a hit?

7. "Rebel Rebel" (Diamond Dogs, 1974; #5 UK, #64 US).

If "Changes" is a classic rock standard in hindsight, "Rebel Rebel" seemed to be one from the moment it was conceived. Released as part of Bowie's messy last stand of late-glam, Diamond Dogs, "Rebel Rebel" was everything that they album which contained it was not: Sharp, clear, & an unabashed success. The guitar riff sounds like it was copped out of Keith Richards' unconscious & was applied to Bowie's slickest set of androgynous lyrics. But most important of all, it has a killer hook for a chorus, driven endlessly forward by that glorious backbeat. Once when I was in a guitar shop, I heard someone testing out a guitar & stack rig with its hook, & it cut through all of the watered-down Zeppelin & Metallica riffs that were playing around it, as though it would be stupid for a decent guitarist to ever play anything else.

6. "Ziggy Stardust" (The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars, 1972; Album Track).

How to best encapsulate the Ziggy Stardust phenomenon? "Five Years" has that exciting build, "Moorage Daydream" has better production values, "Rock & Roll Suicide" has more ambition, & "Lady Stardust" may just be the most beautiful one of them all. But "Ziggy Stardust" has the whole package—summing up the entire project into a little over 3 minutes of space age rock music. Built around a jagged riff that could only be described as Bowie-esque, the music evokes hard rock & heavy metal without ever quite falling victim into it, with a strange set of lyrics that appear to be more straightforward than they actually are. Scattered throughout are our most graphic fleeting glimpses of Ziggy himself, playing left-handed guitar, screwed-up eyes & screwed down hair, & best of all, making love with his ego. Was this supposed to be a send-up of Hendrix? T. Rex? Iggy? Listening it to today, it sounds like all of them combined, consciously & convincingly, until all that can be seen clearly is the legend of Ziggy Stardust—or rather, David Bowie.

5. "Young Americans" (Young Americans, 1975; #18 UK, #28 US).

"Young Americans" stands in a long tradition of rock & roll—not just in terms of its conception as a soul record, but as a soul record that should have been a much bigger hit. In the latter regard, it stands in good company—The Five Satins' "In The Still Of The Night" (#24 US Pop), Marvin Gaye's "A Change Is Gonna Come" (#31 US Pop), & Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep—Mountain High" (#88 US Pop)—for, like those other records, listening to its grooves doesn't explain how it was not a #1 (let alone Top 10) pop hit. For all of the ink that has been spilled about Bowie being a chameleon of rock music, I think I better word might be "student"—he truly studied & understood the music the way few had before or after him, like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, or Bruce Springsteen. "Young Americans" has all of the hallmarks of a bristling soul record—a funk beat, a sharp tune, great call-&-response vocals—plus a handful of Bowie's own signature touches—a cop of the "I heard the news today" line from The Beatles' "A Day In The Life" & a surprise shout-out to the recently-resigned Richard Nixon. & just when you think it can't get any better, check out the live version he sang on Dick Cavett's show here.

4. "Ashes To Ashes" (Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps), 1980; #1 UK, #101 US).

If "Young Americans" was the rare breed of a soul song that should have been a bigger hit, "Ashes To Ashes" was the even rarer breed of a #1 UK hit that failed to make the US Top 100 entirely. (Other notable examples include The Shadows' "Apache," Elvis Presley's "Wooden Heart", & The Rolling Stones' "Little Red Rooster.") At least part of the reason for it is because, even in the realm of Bowie, it is utterly bizarre. It is also hauntingly beautiful. Built around a shimmering, funky hook that sounds like it is made out of both water & glass, "Ashes To Ashes" continues the tale of Major Tom from Bowie's "Space Oddity," bringing the astronaut back down to earth & into an underworld of drug addiction, sung in a weird falsetto with a deadpan Greek chorus underfoot. Throw this together with the most expensive music video made up to that point & you have a true, bizarre, truly bizarre classic that hasn't aged a minute—if only because it doesn't sound like anything else.

3. "Space Oddity" (David Bowie, 1969; #1 UK [1975 re-release], #15 US [1973 re-release]).

David Bowie was 22 when he released his first hit single after a half-decade of toiling under non-hits & failed projects. It is rare that an artist's breakthrough hit can remain a high-water mark for a creative career to follow, but if anyone can defy the odds, it's David Bowie. "Space Oddity" is at once effortless & highly sophisticated, blending psychedelic rock & mainstream pop over a multi-part saga with a drawn-out & involved narrative. It seems as though nothing is compromised—the long, endless fade-in of an acoustic guitar, the wry cleverness of the countdown verse, the shifts back & forth from the brooding, tension-filled narrative sections & the bouncy, hand-clapping bridges, the utter sadness of the melody combined with the sheer wonder of the lyric. By the end, the song is soaring, & then suddenly lost, just like Major Tom himself. But between his disappearance in "Space Oddity" & his reappearance in "Ashes To Ashes," Bowie would chart the course of his own journey as a space-aged rock & roll legend.

2. "Heroes" ("Heroes", 1977; #12 UK [2016 re-release]).

Of all the wonderful film moments to incorporate a David Bowie song (& there are lots & lots of them), the one that stands out the most for me is the use of "Heroes" in 2012's The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. In it, Emma Watson's Sam asks her stepbrother to blast a song with which they are unfamiliar—spoiler alert: it's "Heroes"—as she stands on the back of a pickup truck going through a tunnel. When the film characters revisit the song & tunnel towards the end of the film, lead character Logan Lerman's Charlie sums up the feeling of the song in three words: "We are infinite." This is the sound of "Heroes," a glorious onslaught of guitars & synthesizers that both fades in & out, like it continues indefinitely in some other realm. But what carries it all is Bowie's most passionate reading of the lyric, wringing all of the beauty from the lyric & the melody. It acknowledges the ultimate potential of humanity ("We can be heroes…") as well as its frail limits ("…just for one day"). Sewn together with an allegorical tale of love, loss, & the Berlin Wall, "Heroes" is easily the most powerful song Bowie ever recorded.

1. "Life On Mars?" (Hunky Dory, 1971; #3 UK).

It's probably appropriate that every song from #6 on up is about space beings or space travel—& the one song that isn't ("Heroes") sounds like it was recorded in an intergalactic vortex. Living in the space age has greatly influenced David Bowie's entire career & so it comes as no surprise that his greatest song is called "Life On Mars?" More than any other song he would perform, "Life On Mars?" contains all of the elements that makes Bowie so brilliant: It's a cinematic, sweeping epic swirling with surreal lyrics & music that builds from an unsuspecting show tune ballad into an avalanche of cascading freaks & string. Sailors fight in the dancehall, cavemen in the best-selling show, lawmen beating up the wrong guy; if we are to take the singer at his word, it is in part a disjointed paean to "My mother, my dog, & clowns." The music is no less diverse, with music-hall piano growing into a symphony, slithering violins, searing electric guitar, rollicking bass, thundering drums, & atmospheric synthesizers—it all adds up to an orchestra playing on a careening a pirate ship. In a career that summoned countless distinct worlds, "Life On Mars?" is the rare David Bowie song that seems to capture them all. & if anything else, the song—as well as the catalog it caps—proved that the answer to the title was a resounding YES.

The Top 5 David Bowie Albums.

One week ago, rock icon David Bowie left our galaxy for a new interstellar realm. Bowie was one of the few rock artists of his era—along with Neil Young & Bruce Springsteen & a few others—who turned out a remarkably consistent body of work that stands the test of his time. His most influential & creative work is in turn some of rock music's most influential & creative work.

Here are his 5 most legendary contributions to the rock canon.

5. Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps), 1980.

Turns out that it is much harder to pick a fifth greatest Bowie album than a first, second, or third. Aside from the 4 masterpieces that follow, Bowie had a lot of near-masterpiece level albums, such as Aladdin Sane & "Heroes". But Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps) beats the others for its consistency of sound & quality. Here his textural explorations of the '70s met head-on with the challenge of punk, its postpunk aftermath, disco, & hard funk. They would call the result "new wave," but Bowie outstrips nearly all of his peers who would follow. (The promotional sticker that initially put on the album touts it as "punk rock," but this does more to do with the industry's misunderstanding of the term than anything inside of its vinyl grooves.)

"It's No Game (No. 1)" sets the pace with a woman's voice speaking in Japanese & Bowie singing painfully, absurdly badly, missing some notes & turning others into an ugly yodel. "Up The Hill Backwards" is one of the catchiest songs he ever produced, built around a Bo Diddley-style beat & a vibe that is not all that unlike The Clash in their absurd one-offs like "Hitsville UK." "Ashes To Ashes" is at once both haunting & funky—& I still have no idea how it isn't the most sampled hook this side of James Brown—a surreal pop song that brings his beloved Major Tom from "Space Oddity" back to the cold ground of earth. The result was one of the strangest singles ever conceived of, & indeed, was one of the very few songs to hit #1 in the UK while missing the US charts entirely. "Fashion" both celebrates & mocks the industry with which Bowie has always had a special fascination, resulting in another major hit; meanwhile, the title track is a space-age wonderland of sounds & lyrics, held together by stuttering drumming that sounds like it was copped from a Joy Division single. & songs like "Scream Like A Baby" & "Because You're Young" reached back to a classic pop sensibility that dug deeper than their experimental sonic trappings. If it all felt a little jagged & disjointed, but that was the point. After trailblazing his way through the 1970s, Scary Monsters set a solid course for the 1980s—it's just too bad that neither Bowie nor his peers were able to live up to it.

4. Station To Station, 1976.

Bowie's most appropriately-titled album finds him transitioning between the "plastic soul" of Young Americans & the "Berlin Trilogy" of Low, "Heroes", & Lodger. The epic title track—which, clocking in at over 10 minutes, is the longest song that Bowie ever released—is nearly an album into itself: Scattered instruments fall together into the slow yet driving rhythm that introduces The Thin White Duke, Bowie's porto-disco, white suit-wearing icy crooner who would be his most celebrated persona after Ziggy Stardust; things pick up in a second section ("Once there were mountains…") that pick things up into a clipped bridge of plastic soul, before delivering into the final section ("It's too late…"), which ranks among the finest pop music he would ever record—that rare, elusive kind that doesn't fit into any one sound or era but, in seemingly borrowing from them all, transcends into its own. The result is definitely not the side-effects of the cocaine, so I'm thinking that it must be love.

The following "Golden Years"—originally written for Elvis (who turned it down, though it would have been worth it just to hear him sing "run for the shadows"), but loved by Zappa (it was said to be his favorite Bowie song)—resurrects a lovely doo-wop feeling that reminds one that no matter how far afield Bowie would stray, the old-time '50s rock & roll were never that far away. Yet all of the attention it has gotten as a lovely anachronism misses the point—though classic in style & lyric, it was couched in a sound as modern as a spinning spaceship, giving it an extra layer of both underlying depth & superficial style. The first side closes with "Word On A Wing," returning to the futuristic soundscapes that charted the way to Bowie's future. It made for a beautiful, searing ballad that was at once hip & romantic, without crossing over into maudlin dross. If David Bowie never released another song after Side 1 of Station To Station, he would remain near the top of rock's most innovative artists.

If the album's second side didn't quite live up to the first, it's not Bowie's fault—few albums could—but keeps tirelessly venturing onward through the funny hallucination of "TVC-15," the dance-floor plea of "Stay," & the closing dreamlike cover of Johnny Mathis's 1957 hit, "Wild Is The Wind." In the hands of nearly anybody else, the album would be a career-high masterpiece, but for Bowie, it was merely a weigh station between bigger destinations.

3. Low, 1977.

Released to mixed reviews in early 1977, Low has since become a cornerstone of modern rock music: It was one of only two Bowie albums included in Rolling Stone's 200 Essential Albums list, it was the first Bowie album to receive a volume in the 33 1/3 series, & Pitchfork chose it not only as Bowie's greatest album, but the greatest album of the 1970s, ever. Despite popular belief, it was not produced by Brian Eno (Tony Visconti did the honors), but Eno is all over this album, both in terms of a musician playing on the tracks & a muse that inspired them. The work is divided into two halves: Side 1 is five song sketches sandwiched by two sweeping instrumentals; Side 2 is four mostly-instrumental extended soundscapes. Together, they form a singular vision of a rock artist growing in his confidence as a songwriter & at the peak of his powers as a performer. 

Each instrumental track is striking in the way in which it evokes an entirely different world (as it should, since much of it was intended for Bowie's film The Man Who Fell To Earth). The opening & closing instrumentals of Side 1 are decidedly more pop—the soaring, funky "Speed Of Life" is utterly life-affirming & the cinematic "A New Career In Town" sounds like it was copped from a musical montage in a 1980s film (even if it was recorded several years before the 1980s existed)—while the instrumentals on Side 2 are fascinating excursions into art rock: The cold, haunting wasteland of "Warsaw," the sad & stately overarching sky of "Art Decade," the bizarre, bubbling sea of "Weeping Wall," & the menacing, cryptic underworld of "Subterraneans." Each is an epoch unto itself.

But to my ears, it's the five song fragments on Side 1 that make the album, playing like an artist's sketchbook brimming with ideas. "Breaking Glass" is brittle funk led by searing guitar & building to a perfect lyric—"You're such a wonderful person! But you know you have problems!"—that is at once bluntly cruel & devastatingly funny. "What In The World" is a love song that trips over itself earnestly, taking measured steps that collapse into a sudden flowing refrain that simultaneously ties the whole thing together & demonstrates how unfinished it is. "Always Crashing The Same Car" is a somber rumination on life & automobiles sung with a rare beauty—just listen to the way he says "hotel garage"—that is perhaps the best-kept secret in Bowie's catalog. "Be My Wife" is a pop triumph coming out from the other side that reaches for companionship rooted in a confession of loneliness, all with a cold detachment that nearly defies the work that has gone into it. & centering it all is "Sound & Vision," which is probably the best track of them all—& the album's only real hit (at least in the UK)—half-instrumental & half-adorned with lyrics about the elusive creative process: "Blue, blue, electric blue, that's the color of my room…" It is a churning, minor masterpiece that works as the engine for the album, summing up Bowie's career in three words or less: Sound & Vision.

2. Hunky Dory, 1971.

After years of hard work, promise, & potential, Hunky Dory was Bowie's his first triumph. In hindsight, it's a little striking how showtune-sounding it is—thanks in part to an assist by pianist Rick Wakeman, whose work on this album is so good it almost cancels out his King Arthur-on-ice concept album project some four years later. But good pop music is good pop music, no matter which way you choose it & Hunky Dory is no exception. Taking a step back from the psychedelic rock of his first self-titled album & the harder rock of The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory was nearly unclassifyable as a work, which perhaps means it could be the product of any era. It is a singer-songwriter album that sounds pitched halfway between Broadway & The Bowery, filled with weird characters & sounds that are similar only in how unabashed they all are. There is a certain strangeness in the music, but also a little courage too. It would set the course for Bowie's highest achievements.

The opening pop rocker "Changes" would provide Bowie with a signature statement of purpose that he would spend the remainder of his career living out; "Oh! You Pretty Things" was a strutting celebration of the homo-superior that laid the groundwork for his role as a gay icon; & "Life On Mars" was perhaps the best song he ever recorded--a swirling, cinematic whirlwind of sound that carefully builds on itself before unleashing a sweeping refrain that is equal parts beautiful & surreal. The first side's closer, "Quicksand," is a more mysterious ballad that has been often-invoked since his passing for its verse "I'm not a prophet or a stone age man/Just a mortal with potential of a superman/I'm living on," although its refrain is even more telling, perhaps too much so to be quoted for the mourning masses: "Don't believe in yourself/Don't deceive with belief/Knowledge comes with death's release."

The second side contains Bowie's three ritual killings of the father: "Andy Warhol," "Song For Bob Dylan," & "Queen Bitch" (about Lou Reed). All are charming evocations of their subjects—Warhol is a pure pop-as-surface, near-throwaway tune; Dylan takes the "voice of sand & glue" into its own throat, following in the tradition of Dylan's own "Song For Woody"; Reed is a three-chord slasher right out of The Velvet Underground's Loaded, with deadpan lyrics & a relentless charge. All three would figure heavily into Bowie's persona over the rest of his career—Warhol's philosophy, Dylan's lyrical introspection, & Reed's musical daring, all of which Bowie would make into hallmarks of his own. The album ends with the utterly bizarre (even for Bowie) "The Bewlay Brothers," an enigmatic song that was supposedly written to stump the American audience. Yet this song works too, because it contains beauty—a meandering thing that always winds its way back to the unsuspecting title characters, almost as both an afterthought & a logical conclusion. It doesn't so much close the album on a strange note as it does tap into the strangeness that had been there all along. Bowie would get stranger over the years, but many would hold that, song-for-song, he would never get better.

1. The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars, 1972. 

David Bowie's masterpiece—& one of the greatest rock albums ever made, period. Oh, where to begin? Probably with the concept--Ziggy Stardust was a rare concept album that was conceived as a conceptual art project & carried out that way, with Bowie deciding to become Ziggy Stardust, such that he looked & acted the part of the red-haired alien glam-rocker for the entire period surrounding the album's release, insisting on reporters to call him Ziggy, not David. In playing the part of the biggest rock star in the world, he tried to literally turn into it, arguably taking rock artistry to its farthest & most ambitious point. & unlike so many others who attempted conceptual coups on various levels, the album Ziggy Stardust demonstrated that Bowie—or rather, Ziggy—had the songs to prove it.

Here was cutting-edge, underground glam rock, filled with electric flash but grounded by the warmth of an acoustic guitar, the sound of T. Rex filled out with the showmanship of Jimi Hendrix. All put together, the album told the story of a rock & roll savior whose come to save the world: In "Five Years," news reaches Earth that the planet has only five years left, built around the malt-shop "Earth Angel" chords (& complete with a scene in an ice cream parlor), that is at once an invocation of rock "oldies" & a statement of purpose; "Soul Love" heightens the scene by laying a foundation for the love that will be tapped into by Ziggy (both heterosexual & homosexual), collapsing into "Moonage Daydream," in which Ziggy seems to emerge from the cosmos over a refrain that is as weird & beautifully otherworldly as Elvis's "Blue Moon"; "Starman," the album's lead single, documents Ziggy's arrival being spread as a word-of-mouth sensation with a tune that borrows from the octave-jumping hook of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"; & "It Ain't Easy," the weakest song on the album, closes its first side with the fatal warning that "It ain't easy to get to heaven when you're going down."

The second side opens with the lovely "Lady Stardust," where Ziggy becomes an androgynous pop idol with some of the finest lyrics about the idol-fan relationship ("I smiled sweetly, for a love I could not obey"), which is in its own way is a worthy successor to "Life On Mars?"; "Star" posits the thesis of becoming a rock & roll star by acting like one (ending with Ziggy's line hushed under his breath: "Just watch me now"); "Hang On To Yourself" is a churning rocker celebrating Ziggy & his band, which so effectively summed up their spirit that it was used to open live Ziggy concerts; "Ziggy Stardust," the most familiar song to listeners today, tells the entire tale in miniature—a wild rock star who "made it too far," as everything came crashing down with loud music, sex, & ego; "Suffragette City" focuses on the women backstage through another Velvets-inspired rocker that is among the most covered songs on the album; & finally, "Rock & Roll Suicide" finds Ziggy committing the titular act over another classic "Earth Angel"-like chord progression, all resonating back to the same message, to both idol & fan: YOU'RE NOT ALONE!

Ziggy would famously end his "final concert" with "Rock & Roll Suicide," which at the time led people to believe that Ziggy—& by extension, Bowie—was retiring from pop music permanently. But they soon learned it was just the ending of an act, to make way for a new one—with a new sound & look to go with it. Bowie would have great albums before & after this one, but Ziggy Stardust is his best album because his music & concept, his sound & vision, come together for the first time in a way that was both exciting in spirit & revolutionary in execution.

Last Thoughts On David Bowie, 1947-2016.

"Is David Bowie's 'Young Americans' the greatest song ever?" asked the 2004 fourth edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide. "For the five minutes of the song, all anyone could ever want is to be or do a young American. David Bowie's whole world, & everything great about rock & roll, is in this tune."

& even better is the version he sang on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974:

Let's be clear here: "Young Americans" is not the greatest rock & roll song--it's not even the greatest David Bowie song. But it has a grit, an attitude that carries it, at once cool & removed, & intimate & sexy. The song caught Bowie in his short-lived "plastic soul" phase--between the far more celebrated "Ziggy Stardust" & "Thin White Duke" periods--where he tried to make classic soul & Philadelphia funk records, or at least his own version of it.

By the time he sang the song on Dick Cavett, Bowie was in the midst of a sold-out series of concerts & his usually-pristine voice was shot. We hear him reach for notes he can't quite hit & run ragged over his own lyrics. Instead of taking away from the performance, it only makes it that much better, his body literally injecting that raspy-voiced, going-all-out feel that makes soul music soulful.

& all of this on the title track of a mediocre album in a period of his career which is usually overlooked by his more thrilling peaks.

* * *

When David Bowie died yesterday on January 10--two days after his 69th birthday & the release of his final album Blackstar--he left a legacy that is little equaled in rock. Instead of asking, "What David Bowie song do you like best?," one could just as easily ask, "Which David Bowie do you like best?" A decade before the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna, & Prince were changing up their looks & styles with each new album, David Bowie was pioneering the melding of rock & roll & performance art. He is often described as a chameleon, but this doesn't do him justice. A chameleon blends in with their surroundings; Bowie stood out & led the way for others to follow.

He emerged just after Rock had established itself as Art (with an uppercase A), through the likes of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper & everything that Bob Dylan ever touched. The Beatles & Bob Dylan showed that a rock performer could be a rock artist--& change & progress as their career saw fit. Hence, you have The Beatles' sonic development from the folk-rock of Rubber Soul to the psychedelic rock Revolver & beyond, as well as Dylan's lyrical development from the earnest folksinger of The Times They Are A-Changin' to the surreal joker of Another Side Of Bob Dylan & Bringing It All Back Home. What The Beatles & Dylan did with their albums, Bowie did with his albums, but also with himself.

For Bowie's music wasn't only inspired by his rock peers, but by artists like Andy Warhol, whose "Pop Idea" that anyone could do anything was a major influence. Bowie was also fascinated by the likes of Anthony Newley, a British actor who played a pop star & then became one in real life. Finally, the lure of musical theater (& the gay community that surrounded it) appealed to Bowie, a stage on which one could literally act out a role & become a star.

All of this would inform his music & his Art, which were one in the same.

He developed from the psychedelic pop of "Space Oddity" (1969) & the underrated The Man Who Sold The World (1970) the following year into the showtune-souding-heavy Hunky Dory (1971), which, propelled by his signature "Changes," was his first masterpiece. All of this set the stage for his most celebrated achievement: Ziggy Stardust.

Building on The Beatles & Dylan's musical advancements & mixing it with the philosophy of Andy Warhol, he decided that he would become the biggest rock star in the world by playing the role. He used stretch limos & booked major arenas, believing that if you want to be treated like a star, you have to act like one. What is often overlooked is that the album this was all built upon, The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars (1972), was a rare rock masterpiece, one of the finest albums ever created. From the opening doom-threat of "Five Years" through the wrenching closer "Rock & Roll Suicide" some 40 minutes later, not a second is wasted. Glam rock would soon become an overblown joke of excess, but here it's the economy that shocks you. The title track "Ziggy Stardust" & "Suffragette City" are the famous ones, but every song is a classic. To my ears, nothing sounds better than the centerpiece, "Lady Stardust," which breaks down the love of fandom & rock into a few perfect lines:

I smiled sadly

For a love

I could not obey

Lady Stardust

Singing songs

Of darkness & dismay

"Lady Stardust"--& in turn, Ziggy Stardust--worked because because it was fueled by love--the sacred bond between fan & star, grounded in a swaying piano & the warmth of an acoustic guitar. It's all so touching that you can almost miss him mumbling get some pussy now at the end of the song.

The whole Ziggy Stardust thing went over brilliantly in England, where a few well-chosen TV appearances & concerts could launch someone of great talent into "The Next Big Thing," but it all fell apart somewhere in the American heartland on his Ziggy Stardust tour. America was too big to hold the illusion in place it seemed, & rock music as a whole was beginning to splinter to a point at which an artist like Elvis or The Beatles could no longer unite it, no matter how good they were. The fallout was charted on Aladdin Sane, in which he seemed to struggle between a new persona of "Aladdin Sane" & a continuation of "Ziggy Stardust."

But credit Bowie for keeping going, wherever his muse took him: The 1984 Orwellian glam opera Diamond Dogs (1974); the plastic soul of Young Americans (1975); the emergence of the "Thin White Duke" on Station To Station (1976); the much-celebrated "Berlin Trilogy" of Low (1977), "Heroes" (1977), & Lodger (1979), which found him mixing rock with atmospheric soundscapes; the postpunk Pierrot of Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps) (1980), which yielded the funky, surreal sequel to "Space Oddity," "Ashes To Ashes," which may just be his finest song of all. Let's Dance (1983) shifted the focus to the dancefloor in the 1980s & contained his last truly classic song, "Modern Love." Since then, he's continued to release material, both solo & with various collaborations, some magical, some forgettable, but none of which carry the stamp of his first decade.

* * *

The truth is that none of it needed to.

Through a combination of hard work & good music, Bowie earned that most dysfunctional decade of rock & roll: The 1970s. No one else could deftly mix singer-songwriter music with underground rock & glam, & then soul, dance music, & ambient art rock--let alone enjoy a major hit at nearly every step of the way.

& in acting like a rock legend, he became one. touching nearly every era & legend of pop music: He claimed to have been in the crowd at Bob Dylan's infamous "Royal Albert Hall" concert in which someone shouted "Judas!" (who was decidedly not Bowie; he couldn't understand why everyone was so angry at this wonderful new music); he collaborated with John Lennon in the 1970s, who co-wrote Bowie's first American #1 hit, "Fame," he even sang a duet with Bing Crosby on "Little Drummer Boy" in a 1977 Christmas special.

He was gracious with his time & talent: He wrote Mott The Hoople's comeback hit, the glorious "All The Young Dudes"; he produced Lou Reed's finest album, Transformer; he co-wrote & co-produced Iggy Pop's signature "Lust For Life"; he co-wrote the classic "Under Pressure" with Queen, the hook of which would go onto power Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice Baby" (despite Vanilla's denial); he had a major hit with Mick Jagger on a cover of the old Motown song "Dancing In The Street"; he co-headlined a major 1990s tour with Nine Inch Nails; he collaborated a little over a decade later with a group he had heavily influenced, Arcade Fire. He even wrote a song for Elvis Presley, who passed on it. Bowie decided to record it himself: "Golden Years."

He covered virtually everyone imaginable in the last 40 years of rock music: Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Who, The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Iggy Pop, Jonathan Richman, The Pixies, & many, many more. There are even events that defy the above categorization--how Joy Division initially named themselves Warsaw after an instrumental song on Low; how he spent the 1990s collaborating with seemingly anyone who would have him (Al B. Sure!, Lenny Kravitz, Pet Shop Boys, Placebo, etc.); how Kurt Cobain breathed new life into "The Man Who Sold The World," in his last major performance before killing himself.

If David Bowie was the rare artist who could be all things to all people, it was only because he was all things to himself, a kaleidoscope of sound+vision who influenced all who heard him.

* * *

I wish I could find a way to tie everything back to "Young Americans," but I can only be led back to the stubborn, careening chords of "Time":

Perhaps you're smiling now

Smiling through this darkness

But all I have to give

Is guilt for dreaming

We should be home by now.

Goodnight, David. & thank you for everything.

The Best Of 2015.

This the 5th Annual Edition of American Wolf's Year-End Best Of. As usual, motion pictures are divided into Best Film (spirit animal: Citizen Kane) & Best Movie (spirit animal: King Kong); hopefully one day the Oscars will follow suit. Until then, I'm what you've got. The rest is pretty self-explanatory. I feel like I should have more to say, but you didn't really come here to read this introductory junk anyway, so I guess I won't bother to finish a


 
Best Film: Room.

When I was a kid, I used to wonder what it would be like if I grew up in a single place, watching television. On one level, Lenny Abrahamson's film Room, based on Emma Donoghue's novel of the same name (she also penned the screenplay), provides an answer to this question. Joy Newsome (a spectacular Brie Larson) & her 5-year-old son (an equally spectacular Jacob Tremblay) are confined into a one-room shed by Old Nick (Sean Bridgers). Joy was captured by Old Nick when she was 17; young Jack has never seen the world outside of what they call Room. The film is roughly divided into two halves--their lives before & after leaving Room--with one of the most thrilling escape sequences I have ever witnessed on film in between. The film's claustrophobic first part all but beats you down as a viewer, which only makes the escape & the freedom that follows that much more powerful--& genuinely terrifying. Like the original novel, Room is essentially seen through the eyes of young Jack. He gets the voice-overs, & when more adult events are taking place, we only see them through what he sees. This allows for the film to work as a philosophical meditation. Joy trying to explain to Jack the notion of an "other side" for the first time in his life. His notions about space, sides, & the world. What is real about television, a medium he was initially told all of his life was simply make-believe. Room mixes the tension of a thriller with a pondering on reality in a way that I have never seen in another film. It is at once devastating & beautiful, held together by the most sacred love of all: Mother & Child.

Best Movie: Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.

I was -2 years old when the original Star Wars was released. My parents told me about it like it was this magical thing--how everyone was baffled at this "Episode IV" thing, how it so effortlessly combined the genres of sci-fi, action, romance, & swashbuckler movies, among other things. When George Lucas did his stupid retinkering of it at the dawn of the new millennium, I went to go see it on the big screen. Jabba The Hutt looked stupid & fake. I was happier watching the old version in my living room. This is all just to say that having the opportunity to see The Force Awakens in its theatrical infancy was a thrill. It wasn't just a well-made, intelligent movie (we've come to expect such things from writer-director J.J. Abrams)--it was like the return of old friends. There's Princess Leia, looking like a woman now realistically in her 60s. There's Han Solo, who's only grown crustier with age. & where's Luke Skywalker? The thing that makes it all work is that unlike other back-to-the-future gimmicks (I'm looking at you, fourth Indiana Jones movie), the older generation are used measuredly & credibly. & with the new generation--the conflicted, sinister Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), the reformed, determined Finn (John Boyega), & the totally awesome kickass Rey (Daisy Ridley)--we have for the first time since the original trilogy a cast that is worthy of carrying the story. They make the appearance of Leia, Han, & the rest feel organically rewarding instead of the cheap cameos they could have easily become. & just like the original Star Wars films, it leaves us happily enthralled & dying for more.


Best TV Show: Master Of None.

For the third straight year on this blog, The Best TV Show has gone to something that streams on Netflix. But Orange Is The New Black's reign has ended. Time to step aside for Master Of None, co-written by & starring Aziz Ansari. In it, he plays an Aziz Ansari-like struggling actor in New York City named Dev Shah. Over 10 short episodes, we follow him through a wide range of subject matter: Sex ("Plan B"), family ("Parents"), morality ("The Other Man"), aging ("Old People"), & gender ("Ladies & Gentlemen"). But the two most memorable episodes show how great the show is in terms of both subject matter & composition. One was "Indians On TV," which took a rare look at the portrayal of Indian-American actors in popular media (did you know that was a guy in brownface in Short Circuit?!), & the expectations & frustrations that come with it. The other was "Mornings," which followed Dev & his girlfriend Rachel (last seen as a criminally underused one-season cast member on SNL) in a series of vignettes of the rise & fall of their relationship over as series of months; think Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould for the NYC romantic hipster set. & while the finale ended the season in a less-than-spectacular (& less-than-believable) way, in terms of the rest of the episodes leading up to it, Master Of None captured The Uber Generation in realistic-looking people & dialogue, with an integrated yet credible gang of creative social misfits. Throw on top of this the best (& most varied) use of cold-opens & an amazing array of music (Johnny Cash's stark "There You Go" over one of the openings made me hear the song with new ears), & you've got the best television of 2015--on Netflix, or anywhere else.

Best TV Episode: "Connection Lost," Modern Family.

Modern Family is showing its age & is simply not up to par to its earlier seasons, but then again, few shows in their position could be. (As proof, the always-late-to-the-party Emmys didn't give Best Comedy to Modern Family for the first time since it was on the air, with Veep nabbing the honors.) Yet when it works, Modern Family still ranks with the finest television out there. Take this episode, "Connection Lost," which takes place entirely on Claire's Mac OS X desktop. Our TV screen becomes her laptop screen; we only see her through video chat & follows what online sites she goes to. & yet, the episode effortlessly holds our attention & weaves together several subplots as well as more than a few laugh-out-loud gags. (Who knew that rushing to Google something could be so funny?) The result is an innovative half-hour of entertainment that shows that Modern Family can still come out on top.

Best Song: "Hello" by Adele.

OK, so I've never actually heard Adele's "Hello." Even when I went to put in this YouTube clip, the song didn't start in the first 20 seconds so I went back to this. But even as a person completely deaf to popular radio, "Hello" has to be the song of the year, the way that Godfather was The Oscars' Best Picture of 1972 or Sgt. Pepper was The Grammys' Best Album of 1967. It saturated the media like few other songs of late, going from the expected places (inside all sorts of places in Entertainment Weekly!) to the less-than-expected places (an SNL sketch about how it can bring together a family feuding politics over Thanksgiving) to the completely unexpected places (the cover of TIME!!!). I'm sure one day I'll listen to it, perhaps even later tonight, but for the time being I don't need to. I know it's Adele at her finest--which guarantees it's a pop masterpiece.


Best Album: At Sun Records: The Collected Works by Jerry Lee Lewis.

For countless Christmases, I always secretly hoped for the German-based reissue label Bear Family's 8-disc set of all of Jerry Lee Lewis's master recordings--& more--at Sun Records. But with each year getting further away from its 1989 release date (& thus, 1989-era sound quality), it felt like a diminishing prospect. Enter this set, which suddenly appeared a few months ago. With years of painstaking research in the making, it gathers every single known take of a recording made by Jerry Lee Lewis at Sun Records, in other words, the wildest rocker of them all encompassing his complete creative output at the greatest label of them all. It's a whopping 18 discs worth of material--pretty surreal when you realize that Elvis's entire creative output is 19 songs & less than 2 discs of material--& its breadth speaks to Jerry Lee lasting years longer at the label than his former labelmates Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, & Roy Orbison. He sang hot rockers, sexy blues, country weepers, 19th Century parlor ballads, & traditional folk ballads--& that's just on the first disc! This is a full sweep of American music, in the grand tradition of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives & Sevens, Billie Holiday's Columbia sessions, Robert Johnson's complete recordings, Hank Williams' complete recordings, &, of course, Elvis's complete '50s masters. & it can all be yours for just $389.11! Just one quibble--could Bear Family (or better yet, Rhino Records) please pull out all of the master takes & put that into a 4 or 5-disc set? In the meantime, I'll be saving up for this one.


Best Music Video: "She's Not Me" by Jenny Lewis.

Hold up--a major solo female pop star released a video with all of her famous friends making cameos in crazy costumes & it's not Tay-Tay-Sway's "Bad Blood"?! Nope. The only good thing about "Bad Blood" was that it made me go back & re-watch The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," which beat "Bad Blood" at its own game on a fraction of the budget before Swift was even in kindergarten. So as an alternative to the most overrated video of the year, check out Jenny Lewis's "She's Not Me." It too is chockful of inside jokes (mostly at the expense of Lewis's own child acting career) & makes me only further appreciate the comedic genius that is Vanessa Bayer. Plus, it's got Fred Armisen. As Estelle Getty. Playing Sophia. & did I mention that Feist shows up as a priest from Pleasantville? No "Bad Blood" towards this clip here.

Best Book: Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack by Andrew Schartmann.

It's been an epic year for the 33 1/3 series. They had their semi-annual open call for new title proposals & over 600 people responded (including myself), which they whittled down to a few lucky & worthy volumes (unfortunately not including myself, but props & congrats to all of those who did make it). In the meantime, this volume came out, the first 33 1/3 book to cover music that was never contained on an album. It is also the about the shortest amount of music in the series, some 3 minutes total of all the different themes. Yet it is as hummable to my generation as The Beatles were to my parents' generation, ingrained in our collective unconscious the way that few musical creations are. It is ultimately about the extremely limited confines of a 1980s 8-bit video game for kids proved the ideal palette for Japanese composer Koji Kondo. He emerges as a forgotten pioneer, a hero who proves that sometimes the most seemingly shallow & disposable pop creations can lead to the deepest sense of shared culture. Somewhere, Andy Warhol is smiling.


Best Performance (Solo): Constance Wu as Jessica Huang, Fresh Off The Boat.

If Master Of None was the finest (post-?) modern TV series of 2015, then Fresh Off The Boat was the finest traditional modern TV series (it even airs on a major network--ABC--how quaint!). Initially built around the trials & tribulations of Eddie Huang (Hudson Yang), the oldest of 3 sons in an Asian-American family set in 1995 Florida, it soon morphed into more of a family ensemble, in no small part because its best asset is mother Jessica Huang, played by Constance Wu (& upstaging the always-reliable Randall Park as husband Louis Huang is no small feat). In a way, she is the archetypal tiger mom, but it goes deeper (& more realistic than that), just like how Alex P. Keaton wasn't just another Yuppie. She is very strict & exacting of what she expects from her children, but at the same time loves them deeply & is sensitive to their needs. She is also absolutely hilarious, with some of the best line deliveries I've seen on a sitcom in ages. Fresh Off The Boat may not be the best overall program on TV right now, but whenever Constance Wu is on in it, it might as well be.


Best Performance (Group): Bill Murray, Jenny Lewis, David Johansen, et al., singing "Fairytale Of New York" in A Very Murray Christmas.



I just spent two weeks analyzing this thing in a blog I posted here. Everything I could ever hope to say (& more, & perhaps less) is already there.

The Americanization Of "Fairytale Of New York"

Bill Murray's new Netflix holiday special, A Very Murray Christmas, has gotten largely mixed reviews & it's easy to see why. As a concept, it looms large like a clever, inside joke--the quintessential postmodern comedic actor thrown into the quintessential old-school schmaltz-fest--but as a 56-minute execution, it's far from perfect. Murray teams up with pianist Paul Schaffer (a nod to the Nick The Bartender sketch on SNL that was Murray's breakthrough piece) & mugs his way through a loose story-line of a holiday special being ruined by a snowstorm in New York, surrounded by his famous friends, some playing parts, some playing themselves. & like an old-school holiday special, there's singing throughout, with Murray making his way through the songs, in some cases gamely, in others, laconically.

But the whole execution is worth it for one magical scene in which everything comes together beautifully. Murray's disaster of a holiday special has ended & he is in the hotel bar with Schaffer, singing with the staff & hanger-ons. David Johansen, former lead singer of The New York Dolls & former Buster "Hot Hot Hot" Poindexter, is a bartender who looks so weird & chiseled I thought at first he was Benicio Del Toro in a long shot, & Jenny Lewis, former child actress (see The Wizard & Troop Beverly Hills) & former Rilo Kiley leader (an L.A. indie band that was made up of former child actors), is the waitress with a voice of gold. Off-camera waits Maya Rudolf, former SNL star & daughter of the late-great Minnie Riperton, playing the lounge singer, Rashida Jones, former star of Parks & Recreation (in which Bill Murray had a surprise cameo appearance in the finale as the previously-never-mentioned mayor of Pawnee) & daughter of the legendary producer Quincy Jones, as a down-on-her-luck bride whose wedding is ruined by the snowstorm, & Jason Schwartzman, former child actor in Wes Anderson's classic Rushmore (which marked Bill Murray's breakthrough as a postmodern genius) & a strong contender for the coolest resume of any working actor today (I Heart Huckabees, Shop Girl, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, the Wet Hot American Summer reboot, a half-dozen Wes Anderson films), as the bridegroom. & behind the camera is Sophia Coppola, who directed Bill Murray's finest performance to date, his shoulda-won-the-Oscar performance in Lost In Translation. & the finest moment of that film was also a seemingly impromptu musical performance by Murray--Elvis Costello's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, & Understanding" at a Japanese karaoke bar. (& Sophia herself is no stranger to a good postmodern soundtrack--just check out the music in her punk rock take on Marie Antoinette, which features another fascinating Schartzman performance, but I digress). Suffice to say, we are in good company.

Paul Schaffer begins playing his piano somberly, winding into a simple introduction as Murray hands out a last round of drinks. It is unmistakably The Pogues' classic "Fairytale Of New York." Released in 1987, the song was a duet between chief Pogue Shane MacGowan & Kirsty MacColl, telling of a couple's romantic rise & tumultuous fall over a Christmas in New York. He is all remorse & bitterness, she is all spite & broken dreams. Over the course of the song, they fall in & out of love, portrayed over two singing dialogues that feel like musical theater. In the first, they sing together about dancing on the street as the drunks swing, in the second, he calls her an old slut on junk & she calls him a cheap lousy faggot (to rhyme with "You scumbag, you maggot"). The romance is there but the pain cuts deeper. I once had an English teacher who said that you can only truly hate someone that you once loved, & vice-versa. Yeah, it's kinda like that.

In A Very Murray Christmas, there is no faggot. It skips the second singing dialog entirely, radically reframing the song. In doing so, it takes out the most British part of the song & cleans it up, so that all that's left is the fairytale. In other words, it's the brooding English thriller re-cut for American audiences so that it has a happy ending.

For the song itself is full of cinematic sweeps, both in terms of the song itself as well as in the people who are performing it.

"Inside The Drunk Tank"

When David Johansen starts singing "Fairytale Of New York," he sounds remarkably like Pepe, the Hispanic-accented shrimp in the Muppets. The rubber-faced former frontman of The New York Dolls used to look like a poor man's Mick Jagger, now, as time has deepened the lines in his face & a hipster beard & ridiculous pompadour frame it, he looks like a version of what Mick Jagger could have become if he hadn't insisted upon singing "Satisfaction" into his 70s.

Johansen's voice is razor-edged, with the grit of a thousand New York early-morning hangovers. One thinks of The Dolls' legendary set on January 1, 1973 (with The Modern Lovers opening), where they played for a crowd of key taste-makers, among them Truman Capote & a young Richard Hell; Johansen was dressed in all white--blouse, tight pants, & platform shoes--& swigged from a bottle of Miller beer as he tore into "Trash." "Ah, how do you call your loverboy?" he screams midway through, referencing Mickey & Silvia's "Love Is Strange," which will be memorably mimed in Dirty Dancing a thousand years later in 1987, the same year that Johnansen reinvented himself as Buster Poindexter singing "Hot Hot Hot," evoking the glib yuppie '80s as well as he had dug into the weird artsy 1970s with "Trash." & a year after that, he would appear with Bill Murray in Scrooged as The Ghost Of Christmas Past--in the form of a deranged New York taxicab driver. Scrooged came out on November 23, 1988--a year to the day that "Fairytale Of New York" was released by The Pogues.

At any rate, Johansen sings the opening lines weirdly, cryptically, beautifully.

It was Christmas Eve, babe

Inside the drunk tank

An old man said to me,

Won't see another one

& then he sang a song

"The Rare Old Mountain Dew"

I turned my face away

& dreamed about you

It is a lilting tune, comprised of oddly-paced lines that seem as though they will be too short to cover the music, but land perfectly anyway.

It doesn't hurt that the song opens with the most daring couplet ever ventured in a modern-day Christmas song. Given its almost panoramic pop feel, I wondered at first if it was a Randy Newman song that had slipped my knowledge; if anyone could write a beautiful, honest portrait of New York that sounds like it could be sung under the lights of Broadway or in a second-rate movie house 3 blocks away, it was Randy Newman.

Besides, when Bill Murray begins the second part of the verse, he sounds like Randy Newman.

Got on a lucky one

Came in 18-to-1

I've got a feeling

This year's for me & you

So happy Christmas

I love you baby

I can see a better time

When all our dreams come true

This is Bill Murray's holiday special. He gives himself the most broad, the most simple, the most epic lines of the song--"So Happy Christmas/I love you baby"--7 words that would sound trite in any modern Christmas song, but here beat softly as the song's heart. Murray seems to sing with a slight Irish inflection--always a comedian, perhaps he listened to MacGowan's vocal so many times it got stamped in his mind as an impression.

I was never much of a fan of the old "Nick The Lounge-Singer" sketch, but more than anything else, it's Murray's vocal that I come back to. Pushing 65, his voice has that lovely grit that one can hear in a singer like Randy Newman--that natural scrape that comes when reaching for a note; wanna-be Dylans smoke too many cigarettes & drink too much whiskey to try to age their voice to do the same, but once you've reached Murray's age, you do so without any effort. Murray was never much of a singer (which I guess was the joke of "Nick The Lounge-Singer"), but here he becomes one, putting his lines out there with thought & charisma--a blank, almost flat delivery that, like Lou Reed, can pass you by the first time but impossibly increase with depth upon every new listen. Murray has the time & space to do so, because, after all, it is his holiday special.

Back a thousand years earlier in 1986--a year before "Fairytale Of New York" was released (although a year after MacGowan had begun writing it)--Bill Murray appeared in a very different TV special, Rodney Dangerfield's It's Not Easy Being Me. Given how old-fashioned it feels, I was shocked to learn it was only 30 years old; it reeked of the stuff they were doing on television throughout the previous decade. It was largely comprised of sketches that illustrated Dangerfield's one-note jokes ("When I was born, the doctor slapped my mother!") & ended with an extended monologue of Dangerfield that was so dated he gets huge laughs in the middle by slipping into an eye-rolling, racist "darkie" dialect for a moment. It's all the more surreal to watch it today, as Bill Murray played second-banana to Dangerfield, & the musical guest was none other than The Queen Of Soul, Aretha Franklin (unfortunately in her '80s "Who's Zooming Who" period). The star of the proceedings, Dangerfield, is eclipsed by arguably the greatest postmodern comedic actor (Murray) & the greatest rock singer EVER (Franklin), even when they are both far from their finest work. Seen in scratchy YouTube clips today, Dangerfield truly doesn't get any respect--even in his own TV special.

I would venture to guess that when future generations watch A Very Murray Christmas, no one will doubt who the star is. The fact that Murray took something that he's not particularly good at--singing--& built the special around it only adds to its bizarre comedic happenstance. This is all the more bizarre given an interview this spring with Emma Stone in The Wall Street Journal Magazine of all places:

Next week Stone goes to Cannes for the premiere of Irrational Man, then to London for a few days with her mom. Then it’s back to L.A. to start work on La La Land, a contemporary musical about an aspiring actress and a jazz pianist, directed by Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) & co-starring her frequent on-screen partner Ryan Gosling (Gangster Squad; Crazy, Stupid, Love). Stone will sing and dance in it; she’s already rehearsing the dance numbers. But she’s also trying to follow the advice of her good friend Bill Murray, who counseled her to keep some things—like singing—for herself.

“He told me to keep some things I love just for me,” Stone says. “The idea is to have some things that you don’t feel like you need to share with the world. To have some things that are only yours.” She smiles. “Of course, now I’m doing a musical. I’m working on it.”

Bill Murray, consider your love shared.

"They've Got Rivers Of Gold"

On September 19, 1987, a few weeks after The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl recorded the original version of "Fairytale Of New York," NBC's The Golden Girls had its third season debut episode. The main part dealt with Sophia (Estelle Getty) learning about Alzheimer's Disease through a friend who shows signs of it, but today the episode is better remembered for its B-plot, in which Blanche (Rue McClanahan) accidentally gives away a cherished stuffed bear belonging to Rose (Betty White). They track down the bear to a young Sunshine Cadet named Daisy, who in turn demands a ransom for the bear. Rose finds it in her heart to let Daisy keep the bear. The episode would earn the series two Emmys.

Playing the part of the precocious Daisy was an 11-year-old Jenny Lewis, who was then working as a child actress. She had made her debut in the previous year's Life With Lucy--Lucille Ball's final TV project (Jenny Lewis played her granddaughter) which ABC ran opposite The Golden Girls. It was cancelled after 8 episodes. Thus, within a year, Lewis had made it from being crushed by The Golden Girls to appearing on its Season 3 debut. Not a bad start in show-biz. She would go onto star in MTV Generation cult faves like 1989's Troop Beverly Hills (she had a trampoline in her room!) & The Wizard (she got the biggest line in Nintendo's remake of Rainman: "That man touched my boob!").

A thousand years & one creative transition from acting to music later, Jenny Lewis was back on TV as part of A Very Murray Christmas. By now, she was much better known as a musician, first for leading the indie darling band Rilo Kiley (with fellow former child actor Blake Sennett) & then going onto a critically-acclaimed solo in 2006. Unlike so many other indie singers who have some sort of gimmick with their style, Jenny Lewis is notable for ability to sing simply, almost plainly, letting her pure voice sing for itself. One can hear it in Rilo Kiley's "With Arms Outstretched" or her solo "One Of The Guys," statements of deceptively simple that speak plainly & clearly to anyone listening.

But when it comes to sing MacColl's part in "Fairytale Of New York," she finds a quiet sadness in the song that has eluded others who have sung it:

They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old

When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me Broadway
Was waiting for me

The temptation might be to sing the song in a kind of mystic wonder, an immigrant or pilgrim arriving in New York City for the first time. They've got rivers of gold. "Streets paved with gold" is the more familiar cliche, but rivers of gold is what we have here. It's a lovely, wondrous image, as one imagines a gold sea flowing down the avenues & back alleys of New York City. But there is no love or wonder in Lewis's singing, only a sense of wistfulness. She is not the new wide-eyed immigrant, she is the immigrant a few generations later. She is old, her wonder replaced by jaded reality--& as her song tells us, it's no place for the old.

Lewis snaps out of her sad delivery towards the end, lighting up on the word Broadway, as though it cannot be sung without an exclamation point following it & ending with a gruff "You were handsome," in preparation for Johansen's louder, more edgy singing about to answer.

"Sinatra Was Swinging"

When Shane MacGowan first conceived of "Fairytale Of New York," he saw it as a dialogue between two lovers, charting the course from love to loss, from success to failure, from hope to despair. In the original version, Kirsty MacColl sings the first line, MacGowan sings the next two, & then they sing the rest of the stanza as a duet.

In a Very Murray Christmas, the situation is altered by the presence of a third person--Bill Murray--which adds a new layer to Jenny Lewis' & David Johansen's proceedings:

[Lewis:] You were handsome
[Johansen:] You were pretty/Queen of New York City
[Murray:] When the band finished playing/They howled out for more
[Johansen:] Sinatra was swinging/All the drunks they were singing

[Lewis:] We kissed on the corner/Then danced through the night.

In this recasting of the lyrics, Lewis & Johansen initially only sing the parts sung by MacGowen & MacColl, respectively, with Murray picking up the line that begins the original version's duet. In singing about the band & the mysterious "They" (Is that the crowd? Or were the band howling for more of themselves?), Murray seems to be a narrator-like figure who oversees the song--after all, this is his special. (I also think it's interesting how Murray twists the words "the Band" so that they sound like classic Bob Dylan--is that another NYC joke? Am I looking too far into it to point out that "The Band" was the group that backed Dylan on his electric tour? & like immigrants, they fled the city for the peace of upstate?) Johansen then sings how a man might remember it--that hep cat Sinatra, those singing drunks--while Lewis sings how a woman might remember it--the kiss, the dancing; it is almost like a Christmas version of Grease's "Summer Lovin'."

Sinatra was swinging. What year is supposed to be again? At first I envisioned it being modern day--after all, the Pogues' video was clearly set in late '80s New York City & Sinatra was still performing into his late 80s in New York City. But others cite the image of a swinging Sinatra & the earlier line about the cars as big as bars as evidence that this is an older New York City, around the 1930s & 1940s. If we are to take MacGowan's original concept of an Irish immigrant arriving to the big city, this too would create a tighter picture.

This is all just to say that with time already at question in the song, its placement in A Very Murray Christmas only adds to the ambiguity. TV Christmas specials were the last stand of vaudeville ("You remember vaudville?" went a classic Bob Hope zinger in the 1950s about TV, "Now they've put it in a box!"), which itself peaked in the first half of the 20th century. What we have here is Bill Murray hosting a 2015 Christmas TV special ("You remember TV? Now they stream it on Netflix!") that harks back to the classic TV specials of 1960s, which themselves were a revival of the older vaudeville. (& it wasn't just Christmas specials--Rodney Dangerfield's It's Not Easy Being Me was a similar skit-&-song filled extravaganza). Thus, we have a song from the '80s about the '40s sung in the 2010s in the spirit of an American show business tradition that reaches back a century earlier.

& you thought it was just another Christmas song.

"The Boys Of The NYPD Choir"

There is no NYPD Choir. They exist only as a fabrication in Shane MacGowan's head, an assumption that turned out to be completely unfounded. When The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl shot the video for "Fairytale Of New York," the band had to make do with The Pipes & Drums Of The NYPD's Emerald Society, & even at that, they did not know "Galway Bay." So they sang the only song they all knew, the theme to "The Mickey Mouse Club." That's right, the "M-I-C (See you real soon!) K-E-Y (Why? Because we..." get the picture) song. That's why they're slowed down in the video (not that the actual song "Gallway Bay" is heard in the song anyway). But there they are, New York's Finest, drunk at a black & white video shoot, singing "The Mickey Mouse Club" theme. You can't make this stuff up.

In A Very Murray Christmas, David Johansen, Jenny Lewis, & Bill Murray all begin to sing the refrain, soon joined by Maya Rudolph, Rashida Jones, Jason Schwartzman, & a cast of several:

& the boys of the NYPD Choir

Were singing "Galway Bay"

& the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day

It is the song's moment of triumph, & the cast nail it beautifully, almost off-handedly, combining briefly into one epic refrain.

"I Coulda Been Someone"

When the American Film Institute counted down the 100 Greatest Movie Quotes in American film, one of the longest quotes on the list ranked the highest. Coming after the far catchier "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" from Gone With The Wind & "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse" from The Godfather, was this nugget from On The Waterfront:

You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.

Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy says this to his brother after being betrayed by him. It is the emotional highlight of a cinematic masterpiece.

A thousand years later, Robert DeNiro's Jake LaMotta recites the same quote in Raging Bull, to an equally powerful, if opposite, effect. By this point in the film, LaMotta has gone from a fit champion boxer to a bloated disgrace, doing bizarre stand-up routines in sleazy joints to make money. He has alienated himself from everyone around him & looks like shit. As he says the most famous lines ever said by a boxer in film, they sound dead, the sound of a man who is struggling to learn the words as he recites them like a middle school kid cramming for an English exam.

Whether intended or not (my guess is it was), Shane MacGowan paraphrased a key part of this line in "Fairytale Of New York": I could have been someone. But instead of letting the phrase wallow in its own self-pity like it does on the screen ("instead of a bum, which is what I am"), he instead has audacity to answer it, giving Kirsty MacColl the best line in the whole song: Well, so could anyone. She then laments him taking her dreams, to which he replies that he kept them with him, he can't make it alone, because he's built his dreams around her. As dialogue in a rock song, it's only real rival is Joni Mitchell's barroom chat at the beginning of "A Case Of You."

As with everything else, A Very Murray Christmas takes this already complicated situation & further complicates it by fascinatingly reassigning the dialogue between David Johansen, Bill Murray, & a chorus of girls (Jenny Lewis, Maya Rudolph, & Rashida Jones).

[Johansen:] I coulda been someone
[Girls:] Well, so could anyone
[Murray:] You took my dreams from me
[Girls:] When I first found you
[Johansen:] I kept them with me babe, I put them with my own
[Murray:] Can't make it all alone
[All:] I've built my dreams around you

What began as a conversation between one man & one woman has become an abstracted conversation with oneself; Johansen plays the guy part--mostly--but is answered by the three girls like a Greek chorus expressing a societal ideal. It also sounds a bit like The Jaynettes' classic (& weird) girl group hit, "Sally Go 'Round The Roses," where the singer interacts with an echoed chorus of female voices who are roses that won't share her secret; the result in either case is a depth that is near bottomless, still water that holds so much while only serving to reflect your own image.

I coulda been someone. Well, so could anyone. New York City is a place for dreamers--after all, when Sinatra is swinging he says stuff like "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere"--immigrants who come as far away as Ireland (like Shane MacGowan) or as close as Staten Island (like David Johansen) to reinvent themselves as stars sailing down a river of gold. Among the many other things it does, "Fairytale Of New York" presents both the myths & consequences of this situation, a land where success & failure can be as close bedfellows as love & hate.

Bill Murray gives himself the two most powerful lines (once again, it's his special)--"You took my dreams from me" & "Can't make it all alone"--& gives them all he's got, singing each one powerfully & seriously, but in a manner that can almost be mistaken for sarcasm, Nick The Lounge singer singing the Star Wars theme.

Only it isn't. Murray takes these 2 phrases, these 11 words, & forces you to hear them as they are, alone. You took my dreams from me. Can't make it all alone. They are lonely words & their delivery in this regard only makes them seem lonelier.

By the time everyone sings the concluding "I built my dreams around you," it is no longer a trap but a celebration--of love, of loss, of New York City, of Christmas. Because even if all else has failed, at least you can get a beautiful song out of it.

"For Christmas Day"

The song ends where it should, back with the boys of the mythical NYPD choir, as Christmas Eve turns into Christmas Day, the bells ringing out in an image that is both literal & metaphorical, trite & touching, an illusion of resolution in a song where everything is left open & implied. As for the scene in the hotel bar, everyone is singing & swaying like the drunks did to Sinatra, applauding themselves when the song has ended, as though they themselves have become both the stars of the special & the audience. (After all, it is based around the idea of a Christmas special that no one can get to.) They wish each other Merry Christmas as Murray sits in the foreground, drinking.

He then mouths some words & falls over, signalling the supposed finale piece of A Very Murray Christmas: The extravagant dream-sequence with Miley Cyrus & George Clooney in the heavens.

But you can turn off the television at this point because the real finale has already happened. It was actually "Fairytale Of New York," a song written as an immigrant's romance, reclaimed by the land & city that had inspired it.