Cat People and Shake It? The other tracks are filler, I grant... :)

8. Fame (1975) 11 points

 

 

Well, Bowie got a US chart-topper with this funky study on the pressure of being famous - and if anyone should know about paying the ultimate price of fame it's my hero John Lennon, who co-wrote this with Bowie & his longtime guitarist Carlos Alomar, and he snag on it too not too long after he'd had his first solo US chart-topper too with help from Elton John. It's a great track but struggled in the UK, peaking at 17 - though doing better than John Lennon singles of that period which were being criminally-ignored in the changing UK music scene as it moved from Glam to Disco. In my own charts, Young Americans went top 5, Golden Years topped my chart, and the one in between, inspired by the lack of UK success peaked at a mere under-appreciated 11. Not even the 1990 remixed version got it into my top 10 (peak 17), mainly cos it wasn't as good. For a funk track it's still got those Bowie touches of oddness, like the sliding scale of chipmunk "fame"s down to slowed-bass-"fame"s. I still prefer Golden years though, sigh. So what kept it out of my top 10? A snatch of classic pop records, some oldies revived, Mike Batt's TV theme Summertime City, Jasper Carrot's Funky Moped, and a sniff of cover versions of old songs. Hmmm, yes, things would be very different if I re-did those charts in 2025 for a 50th re-appraisal! Here thanks to Chris & Ready...

That guitar riff on 'Fame', wonderful stuff!

7. Space Oddity (1969) 12 points

 

 

The one that got the ball rolling, and allowed Bowie to claim chart hits in 5 decades, and took the milestone Man On The Moon event in July 1969, used the ground-breaking 2001: A Space Odyssey as inspiration and put a twist to it, setting up his early sci-fi related subject matter - which was right up my street. A minor US hit (124) at the end of 1969, the single went top 5 in the UK just after we'd left the country for Singapore, so I had no idea it existed, who Bowie was, never saw his lost Top Of The Pops performance, nor that he'd become a semi-novelty act as a one-hit-wonder with an admittedly stunning and memorable single, all sweeping strings, melancholy, and an epic ballad treatment. Let's just say it was a massive leap up from The Laughing Gnome! By the time I got back to the UK, Changes was the new Bowie track - and that got no airplay or sales action, but there was a buzz building. By the end of 1972 this was out again in the USA as the world went full-on Ziggy and this time it took hold and hit 15 on Billboard in 1973, which was about the time I first got to hear it, 4 years late, and it seemed alright but not quite modern-sounding. Roll into 1975, and RCA started demonstrating how much they were prepared to mine the Bowie back catalogue during official new single release gaps when they re-issued Space Oddity as the main track on what was essentially an EP (Changes was the other great single) - and this time 6 years of demand had built-up enough to take it all the way to top the charts, and to give Bowie a quick chart double-topper for me in late 1975 along with Golden Years. At this point we had no idea Major Tom was going to keep popping up on great singles, but I've never really stopped loving the track ever since, probably more from fondness I rated it inside my top 5 rather than some of his other personal chart-toppers, cos this was his first one for me. Oh, yes, forgot to add the fab Rick Wakeman (of yes and solo progrock success) is on piano, the fab Herbie Flowers is on bass (he of Blue Mink pop hitsters, T.Rex late-career, and Sky classical instrumentalists, the man who played the classic Walk On The Wild Side bassline, and err who wrote Clive Dunn's Grandad chart-topper) and it was voted for by moi, Chez and Dexton.

I adore Space Oddity! We sung it in our year 5/6/7 “choir”

I adore Space Oddity! We sung it in our year 5/6/7 “choir”

 

I would have loved to have sung it at school, all we had were dreary hymns and obscure stuff I've never heard since :lol:

6. Under Pressure (1981) with Queen 16 points

 

 

A UK chart-topper that came out nowhere in late '81, Bowie & Queen together, no video, no promo-work, just sold on the basis of being a great record made by 2 giants of the 70's who were both hot again in 1980, giving Queen a 2nd Uk Number One, and Bowie a 3rd, though it peaked at a more modest 29 in the US, oddly since Queen had just had a batch of chart-toppers. Perhaps a bit too rhythmically off the wall for US radio, or at least 9 years ahead of it's time - cue Vanilla Ice Ice Ice Baby and another UK chart-topper, and the US and everywhere else! Cheekily Ice didn't credit Bowie & Queen until he was forced to in a lawsuit - he didnt just nick the bassline and drums, he sampled them. That bassline? John Deacon, modified by Bowie. The song? Freddie Mercury for the most part, though lyrically it's more Bowie than anyone. Not bad considering it was an impromptu session set up after Bowie didn't like his own vocals he was lending to a Queen album track. It's sobering to reflect we've now lost both Freddie and David. It topped my chart for a quick single week on top in between an avalanche of my two fave 70's bands on top (it knocked off ELO) before being knocked off by Human League's timeless Don't You Want Me, which itself was knocked for 6 after 1 week by the other 70's giants Abba. I understand ELO, Queen, Abba and David Bowie are still a bit popular. Up to this point the songs were closely packed in points, now we leap 5 points clear of the 7th position as we get into the top end, and voters were Bigwig, Dexton's top-rated track, and Rob S. The points get big as we go into the top 5 as we get down to the ones lots of folk voted for....

I would have loved to have sung it at school, all we had were dreary hymns and obscure stuff I've never heard since :lol:

 

Also on the set list were songs like Use Somebody, Without You (U2), Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Six Months In A Leaky Boat and more

 

I love Under Pressure, one of my all time favourites. Although saying that, Rebel Rebel (my #3 I believe) is incredible too and is very high on my list. I would argue I prefer Rebel Rebel now, but Space Oddity does have a special place in my heart

I kinda thought 'Under Pressure' would win due to the two giants on it.

 

What more is there to say - this is one of the biggest hits of the 80s!

I didn't think of Under Pressure when putting my top 5 together,but even if I had,I think I would have stuck to solo Bowie songs.

Also on the set list were songs like Use Somebody, Without You (U2), Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Six Months In A Leaky Boat and more

 

I love Under Pressure, one of my all time favourites. Although saying that, Rebel Rebel (my #3 I believe) is incredible too and is very high on my list. I would argue I prefer Rebel Rebel now, but Space Oddity does have a special place in my heart

 

Pretty cool music teacher I'd say! KIngs Of Leon, U2, Green Day and the fab under-rated Split-Enz :cheer:

5. Starman (1972) 23 points

 

 

This is it. This is where it all began proper, after the one-off that was Space Oddity. Spring 1972, and a brand new single excitingly called Starman (one of my fave Legion of Super-Heroes characters was Star Boy, and there was the original Justice Society Of America Starman from 1941 who I also liked, he was still going at that time (and currently starring in the pilot to a new DC series Star Girl) - Bowie was ahead of his time, and I was totally in sync. But not in 'NSync. Contrary to popular opinion, Bowie didn't debut Ziggy on Top Of The Pops (though that was when the ball started rolling), he turned up on late afternoon kids show Lift Off With Ayshea, which featured current hits and new releases from pop stars and a couple of recent songs covered by host Ayshea Brough, who had appeared in the Gerry Anderson fab TV show U.F.O. in 1969/70, and who within in months was dating my other solo male popstar idol of the time, Roy Wood. See, everything links beautifully back to me. Anyway, kids show, David Bowie with his proto-Ziggy image singing Starman a few weeks before it became a hit single. Yes, I loved it. Just to prove that the BBC weren't the only morons in broadcasting, ITV stations also went through a cultural erasure of my musical youth by wiping all but 4 rescued episodes of Lift Off, which ran for around 3 years 1971/1974, so that Ziggy debut is well and truly gone unless the signal has somehow been interrupted by an actual Starman, up to about 48 and a bit light years away, and recorded for posterity. So we've got the live TOTP version, which even the TOTP orchestra don't ruin. Key 70's pop moment.

 

Anyway, the music! It's fab. Mick Ronson is a key ingredient, on record and image-wise. Bowie wasn't as big as his big mate Marc Bolan (T.Rex were undisputably the biggest pop band in the UK, and spearheaded glam rock with glitter galore and androgyny) but by the end of the year Bowie had taken over his thunder. Lyrically, a Starman sends music to save us all, and my word don;t we need it even more than we did 48 years ago. To be clear it wasn't just me who loved the song, it was a host of future pop stars the same age as me. 14 years-old is the optimum age to see something new and exciting and be inspired, or 2 or 3 years earlier at a pinch, but I didn't become a rock star (and in any case T.Rex beat Bowie to it, for me). Melodically, it owes a bit to Judy Garland's Over The Rainbow - oh yes it does, Bowie changed the words sometimes in concert - and T.Rex's Hot Love extended brilliant La La La outro. Being a musical magpie is a good thing if you do something new with it! Critics loved it, and I can't understate the cultural importance of the growing number of households with expensive new colour televisions had on Bowie and Glam Rock and Top Of The Pops being so popular - we bought our first colour TV for the 1972 Olympics, as did many other working-class households, and we had a new multi-coloured wonderful world to look at having spent our lives watching black and white TV. Wham!

 

Voted for by me, Chris, Chez, Steve, ready for it, and Jester's top track. That's twice the number of voters of the nearest challenger, so pretty popular across the board!

Wonderful record, that guitar beginning just sounds amazing to this very day!

Adore Starman - such an iconic song.

I’m glad Beauty and the Beast made into the rank. Such an underrated gem :wub:

4. Ashes To Ashes (1980) 42 points

 

 

Bowie's second-coming commerically, and the second outing for Major Tom outdoing the first and the third on this countdown, and with a whopping increase in points, almost double that of Starman. What does this mean to me? It means the start of the video age, quite literally for our family. dad bought a Philips 2000 video-player following much urging from me, so I could record my fave popstars and Star Trek episodes for posterity. Up to the moment this topped the UK charts the notion that you could ever see something on TV again was unthinkable, it was just something rich people could afford to do. It was still expensive, and the tapes were £20 a shot for 2 hours, the equivalent of about £50-£75 in todays money I'd guess, so you had to REALLY love something to save it. The first video I loved enough to make the grade was Ashes To Ashes. Total magic, and the end video of that first TOTP I could record from. Bliss!

 

Bowie had produced another original-slightly-warped-sounding pop song, quirky and catchy in various vocal keys and double-tracking, resurrected a key cult song character, now a junkie, the lyrics at odds with the upbeat sound. The video sold the record immensely, revisiting The Man Who Fell To Earth, another alien, and coming over all dark Harlequin and New Romantic, walking with Steve Strange in front of a digger on a beach, special effects giving it dayglo appeal. I thought it was a major advance in promo videos, and I was a huge fan of them from day one already. It ought to be, mind you, the most expensive shoot to date. Loved it. Loved the record, it topped the UK charts, topped my charts for 4 weeks, and err 101 on Billboard, the US totally oblivious to the coming avalanche of Britpop synth-based pop videos which would soon saturate the new MTV video channel and US Hot 100. Bowie, as per, had moved on from the 70's and was there at the start of a new movement for the 80's.

 

This would have been in my top 5 had I voted on a different day of the week, but I just switched to Space Oddity on the day, but happily beloved of AH Gold's 10 points, 1 point from Chris, Rollo's 7 points, Leww's 7 points, Chez's 1 point, Callum's 10 points, Jester's 2 points, for a new widespread voter-base of 7 - and it still only came 4th!

I learned to adore this one when I watched Ashes to Ashes in 2008 when the show was named after it and the clown from the video was reproduced in the first series and also when the old totp episodes helped me see it entering the uk charts at the time, different to anything at that time.

3. Let's Dance (1983) 44 points

 

 

Chic-tastic debut brilliance from Bowie on his brand-new label EMI, going straight for the pop jugular, and doing it in cool style. It became the 4th David Bowie UK chart-topper, and his 2nd US number one, and topping or nearly-topping most pop charts in the world. Cos it's fab. By early 1983 MTV was spear-heading British acts and music, as the New Romantics visual appeal and creative video directors like Godley & Creme were-well-placed to join the emerging video-domination of Michael Jackson and a handful of American acts in a sea of non-video-friendly MOR rock. The track kicks it, funk-rock with horn, and the video set in sunny, exotic Australia made social comments with the inclusion of young attractive Australian indigenous people seen working low-paid jobs or hauling machinery, and ending with an atomic explosion - as always with Bowie, the jolly has undertones of something darker, albeit this time visually.

 

I was working in a factory in a dying ex-coal-mine community at the time, and my life was not what you'd call sunny and exotic - what do people working in dull low-paid jobs want to do? Party! Best I could do was vicariously through the brilliant music video pop scene in 1983, and Bowie was a jewel in the music biz in 1983. For Bowie, the new pop fans who knew little of his 1970's career seemed to leave him at odds at who to cater for in the 80's (correct answer, cater for no-one but yourself, even if it's not popular), but it kinda got a 21st century stamp of approval when Craig David's Hot Stuff used Let's Dance as the backbone of it and it duly topped my chart again having become Bowie's 5th to date first-time round. And I got to see David sing it live on the 1987 Glass Spider tour, hooray! Voted full marks here from Chris, and lesser spots from Rollo, Leww, Bigwig, Jade, Jester, Dexton, ...ready, and Rob, or 9 voters and an across-the-board popular track. Just 2 left now...

Expected 'Let's Dance' to be high up here due to the Chic genius which appeals a lot nowadays too, what's the top 2 then?

Expected 'Let's Dance' to be high up here due to the Chic genius which appeals a lot nowadays too, what's the top 2 then?

Heroes and Life on Mars?