The Top Five Songs of... David Bowie

Henry Irving

Part One of a very occasional series.

Starting with the Beckenham Boy Davey Jones.

5. Young Americans - The peak of his soul boy era

4. Queen Bitch - David pays tribute to the Velvets

3. Rock and Roll Suicide - Teenage angst writ large

2. Heroes - "We can be heroes just for one day"

1. All the Young Dudes (the Mott version) - speed jive, shoplifting, T Rex and drag queens all with a great riff


Please feel free to disagree, rant or add your own top five.

Goonerhater

Laughing Gnome Henry how could u miss that one !

LenGlover

Changes and Starman for me.

Shrew

''letter to hermione'' my fave

SantaClaus

Wild is the Wind
Space Oddity
Scary Monsters
Sorrow
Kooks

carly burn

Dancing in the street.

Classic!

BlackForestReds

Life on Mars
Sweet Thing
The Bewlay Brothers
Lady Grinning Soul
Teenage Wildlife

joeaddick

Starman - Mainly because it was the first time I saw him (TOTPS).
Hooked ever since. Added bonus was how that performance really pissed off my dad..."What a poof"

Ziggy Stardust - Love the delayed dual vocals on the chorus.

Strangers When We Meet - From Outside. Another musically groundbreaking album from him.

Heroes - Overplayed since ‘77 but still stands up to time. I still remember the RCA slogan at the time…"there's old wave, there's new wave and there's David Bowie"....

Scream Like A Baby - From Scary Monsters Album. Toss up with that or Teenage Wildlife, On another day it could be anything else from that album.
To be honest this top 5 would probably be totally different tomorrow.

RedArmySE7

Let's Dance
Ziggy Stardust
China Girl
Space Oddity
Heroes

Without Doubt!

Badger

Mine would be

Can't help thinking about me

Holy Holy

Amsterdam

Panic in detroit

Stay

charlton4ever

Starman
Life On Mars
Drive In Saturday
Rock N Roll Suicide
All The Young Dudes

I loved Glam Rock!

bingaddick

1. All The Madmen - "day after day they send my friends away to mansions cold and grey" Always makes me cry
2. Ziggy Stardust - "Ziggy played guitar jamming good with Weird and Gilly and the Spiders from Mars" How good are the lyrics?
3. Suffrogette City - "don't lean on me man cos you can't afford the ticket" - anthem
4. Drive in Saturday - "his name was always Buddy" - says it all for me
5. Life on Mars - "the girl with the mousey hair" - I always wondered who she was

I could probably find a different five on another night. The music's great the lyrics are just fantastic, the man is a genius.

Kap10

Al The young Dudes
Heroes
Time
5 Years
Ziggy Stardust

pickwick

Life on Mars - 'Sailors dancing on the fight floor'

stonemuse

Only 5! That's tough.
1. All the madmen - absolutely brilliant, his best ever
2. Superman - fantastic acoustic solo version, can be heard on the first Glastonbury Fayre album, early 70's
3. Life on mars - as others have said above, the lyrics stay with you forever
4. 5 years - Bowie on the apocalypse - superb
5. Starman - still a great pop song and the one that introduced Bowie to most people

I could have added another 20!

bingaddick

[cite]Posted By: stonemuse[/cite]I could have added another 20!

Yeah, very tough to pick five.

News Shopper

1) Space Oddity
2) Starman
3) Ziggy Stardust
4) Ashes to Ashes
5) Sound and Vision

dartfordgent

suffrogette city.................on the juke box coach and horses dartford........many years ago good memories after taht not much as think over rated ...

Stig

Life On Mars
Starman
Space Oddity
Kooks
Ziggy Stardust (but the Bauhaus version is better)

southamptonaddick

I can't pick five. Nearly everything he did was outstanding.
Just as a claim to fame I went to Sedgehill and Bowie had a house just down the road from the school. Me and a couple of others plucked up the courage to knock one day and although we never saw Bowie we were given a signed picture.

bingaddick

I went to Ravenswood School for Boys at Oakley Road, Bromley Common. The school was originally Beckenham Techincal HIgh and moved from there to Bromley in the middle 1960's. David Bowie (Jones) was a pupil of Beckenham Tech and we justifiably boasted that "he went to our school". He appeared in a whole school group photo in about 1962 or thereabouts and it was treated a little bit like a shrine to many of us. He was an iconic figure to many of us especially during his Ziggy Stardust period. I remember one of my fellow pupils went for the full look - Spikey hair dyed red, and was known to everyone as Ziggy. He let it be known (total bullshit) that he knew him and he said he had arranged for him to "open" our school sports day (circa 1974). Needless to say, he never arrived much to our chagrin!

Our attention soon switched though when it was revealed that our art teacher Mr Frampton was indeed Peter Frampton's dad and he is supposed to have brought in an uneditted tape of the USA tour gigs which formed the basis of the album "Frampton Comes Alive", which was released shortly afterwards and became at the time the largest selling double album ever. I believe Peter made a brief appearence at our school as a pupil as well some years before.

LenGlover

My sister shared a house with Peter Frampton's brother.

How's that for a claim to fame:-)

Henry Irving

Bump

newyorkaddick

Life on Mars
Starman
All The Young Dudes
Modern Love
Heroes

stonemuse

I'll retain my original five but it could easily have been a top 25

Miserableoldgit

1). Drive In Saturday ["Buddy"].
2). Five Years. ["What a surprise"].
3). Sorrow. [Very apt].
4). Cat People. ["Putting out the fire....].
5). Absolute Beginners. [Janet Armstrong].

And......Life on Mars, Rock and Roll suicide, Amsterdam..........

CHG

Oh! You Pretty Things
Jean Genie
Life On Mars?
Let's Dance
Heroes
Very difficult to narrow down to 5.

bobmunro

Impossible for me to give a top 5 as it would change by the hour.

Wall to wall Bowie in the car today. The last track playing on my iPod as I drove in this morning was 'Heroes' so I'll go with that for now as number 1.

I won't get any work done today so I might as well go home. Just gutted.

hoof_it_up_to_benty

Heroes
Starman - first time I saw him on TV
Kooks
All the young Dudes
Changes

Loads more - fantastic body of work

NorthStandUltra

In no real order as I'm still stunned 4 hours on from hearing the sad news.....

Starman
Space Oddity
Suffragette City
Heroes
Let's Dance

Also in contention, Modern Love, Life on Mars, Jean Genie, Little Wonder

Work is genuinely irrelevant today, gutted & I never met or saw the man

ken_shabby

Very straight five from me. I'm sat here listening to it as I write.

1 - Ashes to Ashes
2 - Space Oddity
3 - The man who sold the world
4 - Heroes
5 - Modern Love

And a special mention for Under Pressure with Queen.