Part of the benefit of a mostly blind study like this is that we run into certain songs that resonate through the eras, that you've heard as pop culture, and you don't get to learn what its really like to experience those things for a first time. For instance, it was one thing to hear, on the last album, the riff for "The Man Who Sold The World" but I cannot imagine what it must've been like listening to the Grunge Overlords themselves break it out on MTV for a crowd of people who were probably too young to appreciate or recognize the original composition.
That is to say that appreciation is everything. And Hunky Dory is worth appreciating.
So let's look at each song, one by one, as we do.
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1. Changes
Favorite Lyrics: "Don't tell them to grow up and out of it . . . Where's your shame / you've left us up to our necks in it,"
Probably one of the single most popular tracks in Bowie's discography, Changes seems an angry song about the treatment someone younger, say like Bowie at the time of recording, got from some of the older vanguards in music. Of course, it doesn't have to be that specific. This could easily apply to growing up in general. So while the chorus line has always to me seemed like a self-reflexive look at oneself and meditation, it seems far more upward punching than that. And not to get lost in meaning, this song is incredibly rock-funk with its saxophone and piano dittys keeping a lively exciting pace. It's almost a return to that bandy sound of the first album.
2. Oh! You Pretty Things
Favorite Lyrics: "All the nightmares came today / and it looks as though they're / here to stay"
This song is a tad difficult to pin down, meaning wise. Its almost similar to alien invasion territory, or rapture mythology? I'm not sure. One thing for certain though we're continuing with the funky sort of bluesy sound. The piano is the guiding instrument and the small pieces it has between and leading up to the chorus almost strikes the same laid back bassy sounds of Linus & Lucy (and yes maybe that's one of the only piano songs I know by name).
3. Eight Line Poem
Favorite Lyrics: Nothing really gets me
This is another istrument focused song, being much more about the guitar and the melody of the piano. When Bowie does sing its in long howls. Eight line poem ends up sounding a lot less poetic than the other Bowie songs and I don't have much more to say about it.
4. Life on Mars
Favorite Lyrics: "Take a look at the Lawman / Beating up the wrong guy / Oh Man! Wonder if he'll ever know / He's in the best selling show"
"Life on Mars" is a fantastic song. Like, incredible. To me its fascinating that this song is not more spread around than something easy like Changes, or something as dreamy mournful as Major Tom. The central question of this song easily depicts the depth to which the lyrics betray the mourning of feeling alone on the Earth, or feeling like the people here are quite stuck in their own lives, their own heads. My favorite lyrics betray both the brutality and the shallow center stagedness and meaninglessness that such brutality betrays. There's a great question in this song that cannot be parsed, cannot be answered, and that mournful question is one that sent man to the moon and back.
5. Kooks
Favorite Lyrics: "Soon you'll grow so take a chance / On a couple of Kooks / Hung up on Romancing"
Penned it seems as a song being sung to a child. Or maybe it's just meant to be some sort of young person. The message is clear and nice and happy and optimistic, a bit of a pill that was needed after the cynical bit of "Life on Mars" and this one is another good crowd song. You can imagine being in a small venue and swaying and singing with the guitar, piano, and voice guiding you through it. And honestly, what a good chant. "Kooks" of course establishes what's been Bowie's trend for a long time of depicting aliens. Sometimes, the most alien thing in the world is to love freely and not care too much about the way of things.
6. Quicksand
Favorite Lyrics: "If I don't explain what you ought to know / you can tell me all about it at the next bardo"
A sad and mournful song that begins low and slow. For a while it seems like Bowie's singing doesn't match the tone of the music, but it eventually gets there. The quicksand here seems to be the idea of believing something which guarantees you believe everything, and Bowie doesn't pick as much sides in a religious debate, as he points out that "I'm tethered to the logic of the Homo Sapien." While it doesn't feel even as transcendental or timeless as "Life on Mars" this song pushes another topic that Bowie refers to again and again.
7. Fill Your Heart
Favorite Lyrics: "Things that happened in the past / Only happened in your mind / Only in your mind - Forget your mind"
Keeping with the streak of optimism on the album, Bowie returns to "Kooks" territory to evangelize for love. The favorite lyrics I chose are because they seem the most important to the concept. History, experience, are elements of our identities but we often relive experiences and old pains to continue justifying some sort of prejudice against action, thought, and situational and present day living. I think that's what Bowie is going for at least.
8. Andy Warhol
Favorite Lyrics: "Andy Warhol looks a scream / hang him on my wall - hol-ol hol-ol"
Bowie was a fan of Andy Warhol and so this song sort of works as a celebration of him. Though the song itself starts off with a more interesting part than the other parts I think. It zones in out of the last song with a high pitched warning sound and then opens with a funny exchange over the pronunciation of his name with some one outside the sound booth. Then the song kicks in and is fairly normal until the end when we jam out a little with the high pitched guitar strings again. Perhaps a capturing of the crazed and abstractual nature of the man's outwork in musical form.
9. Song for Bob Dylan
Favorite Lyrics: "With a voice like sand and glue / His words of truthful vengeance / Could pin us to the floor"
This song for Robert Zimmerman is where a blind listen reaches its limits. I'm not horribly familiar with Bob Dylan, so I'm almost certain it's using elements I'm not aware of. Consider this that moment when you're watching a Marvel film and something happens or an object in the background is lingered on too long by the camera and you just know that you're missing something. I'm sure that Bowie, his inter-musical nature, is making reference, homage, honoration, and possibly parody of Dylan with this piece, I just don't know how exactly.
10. Queen Bitch
Favorite Lyrics: None popped out
This is a strange song and it's a little hard to tell what's going on. I know that "bipperty-bopperty hat" stands out as a description (it's made up so of course it stands out) but the song seems to describe a girl... and I'm not sure what type of girl. Sure the title is one thing but it's never said in the song, and when Bowie gets into the parts where he's like "I should've said" or whatever it's like he's regretting not going with her, but then he's also like angry about who got to go with her? It's difficult to say. Either way, this song feels a bit lower on the Bowie quality scale. Great guitar riff though.
11. The Bewley Brothers
Favorite Lyrics: "Oh and we were gone / Real cool traders / and we were so turned on / you thought we were fakers"
A long and strange and sad sounding epic. There's so much going on this song its difficult to pin point. It seems to be about a couple of characters (maybe based on real people) who led public thought in some way or another. Either way it ends and has holdings of a type of demonic or dark ending. The music is nice, a break from the multitude of sounds in the other songs for a more stripped down guitar and vocal performance. It echoes nicely and its a pretty good ending, though a sad one for an album as happily named as Hunky Dory.
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So that was Hunky Dory, overall it was a pretty decent album although we see Bowie getting a bit more towards an abstractual lyrical direction. He's also reaching out and touching on culturally important stones. This was the last album made before Bowie began to reach top charting albums and from here on out we're going to see if his personality stays similar or if he continues experimenting as much as he has before.
Next week we'll be taking a look at the magnum opus of Bowie's career, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
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