Well, yesterday was a doozy wasn’t it, dear Filthy Dreams readers? Learning that after the release of his haunting album Blackstar on Friday, David Bowie passed away, returning to his home planet that he fell from years ago. By essentially heroically scoring his own death with Blackstar, especially the song “Blackstar,” which seems to enact Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, Bowie reminds us that while David Jones may have “dropped his body,” as Genesis Breyer P-Orridge says (and is anyone more worthy of that description than Bowie), Bowie–the myth and the music–will live on forever.
For us, as many others, Bowie represented possibilities–self-creation, androgyny beyond labels and a sense that we, as fellow weirdos, were not alone. After a day of snot-running ugly crying, we decided to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and celebrate Bowie’s music with a playlist of his underappreciated songs (yes, after Blackstar, which we included for our obsessive overanalysis).
Of course, we adore Young Americans, Heros, Rebel Rebel and Changes as much as the next alien-lover, but let’s memorialize Bowie’s lesser known and lesser acclaimed but still incredible songs.
Admittedly, not all these songs are classics but, bad Bowie can sometimes be more fun to belt than good Bowie. Case in point: “Red Sails,” which a friend recently described as “beautifully awful.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
So, dearest readers, dry your tears, put on your red shoes and dance.