Revisit other SputStaff Top 10 Lists:

Bjork | Bon Iver | Chelsea Wolfe | Kanye West | Metallica | Mastodon 

mewithoutYou |  My Chemical Romance | Queens of the Stone Age | The National 

 Say Anything | Swans | Taylor Swift | Tim Hecker | Thrice | Yellowcard

David Bowie’s impact is cohesive and powerful when assessed within conventional metrics like “innovation” and “longevity”—some call swan song BLACKSTAR (2016), released 49 years after his first LP, the best work he ever did, generally without much objection from those who think his magnum opera issued forth decades rather than days before his tragic, shot-heard-round-the-world-style departure from this Earth. As for innovation, innumerably more people will testify to how consistently Bowie pushed against the generic boundaries of radio music throughout his long, long career, despite rooting his practice in familiar traditions of chords-and-melody drawn from British folk, Gershwin showtunes, 1950s rhythm-and-blues—lots of stuff people had already heard whose emotional contracts with global audiences had new life breathed into them by a guy whose relationship with tradition was purer for its lack of self-surveillance. Bowie forged his own path by not caring how he’d come off seemingly at all—his career takes on an unpleasant shape if you fetishize either tradition or subversion, and so he’s the kind of artist who teaches us to be better listeners, to latch less often onto shit that ultimately doesn’t matter. I don’t know if I believe Nietzsche when he says that we’re losing some essential element of experience in grouping together as “leaves” the individual green things that issue forth from trees one at a time. But when I listen to Bowie’s best material, I do feel the push to stop pointing at things so much and trying to name them.

Bowie’s music was also always animated by the spirit of the other strain of his impact as an artist, which strain is harder to define. Bowie was as visible a figure of the true-grit counterculture as we’ve ever had, and he taught many people that it’s okay, sometimes heroic, to be weird. It doesn’t show up on the Richter scale of historical import so good, but I think the livelihoods of many of my friends were improved immeasurably, or at least moreso than with any other artist, by listening to Bowie, for which I feel endless gratitude. Generations of artists, teenagers, outcasts have come to terms—through BLACKSTAR, through “HEROES”, sometimes with all-goddamn-26 studio albums in tow—with the fact that when they point at themselves and try to name what’s inside they can’t quite nail it down. I’ve long sat outside the fandom campfire with Bowie, but I perceive acutely the value of this comfort writ both large and nearly imperceptibly small. Bowie’s music tells these people—some of them your friends, some of them mine—that it’s okay not to have a specific name for the billion things roiling inside you, which is important to me as a person because it is okay. Bowie’s gone now but because we have his music it’s all going to be okay. So let’s dance. – robertsona

Honorable Mentions:

15. Space Oddity

14. Dollar Days

13. Diamond Dogs

12. Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide

11. Blackstar

Sputnik Staff’s Top 10 David Bowie songs:

(10) “Lazarus”

 from Blackstar (2016)

Starting the Top 10 Bowie songs with the swan song is quite bleak, but man, what an exit. He simply said fuck it and experimented with a New York jazz quartet, turning Blackstar into a darker, uncanny album. Nevertheless, a dose of humor and playfulness can be found on it, in the way a true English man would crack a joke in front of death itself. “Lazarus” was pretty much a 180 degrees turn from the 10-minute, electro jazz title track, tapping into more familiar grounds. The brooding yet groovy bass rhythm and saxophone leads plead for a melancholic vibe, while David ponders on various stages of his life. Some lyrics seem to be written from a postmortem point of view, as well as on the verge of dying. Those sharp guitar twangs at the end feel gut-wrenching, really signaling his end. There’s a certain morbid charm in the way he toys with words during the entire album, leaving the audience to find clues in every other verse regarding his health deterioration, morale or the actual misleading itself. In fact, he did it so beautifully that even after eight years, it remains a bit uneasy to listen to the lyrics, let alone watching the music video. However, it brings a slight smile on your face too, thinking how brilliantly he managed to pull all of this off. Although wrapped in the unfortunate event of his passing, “Lazarus”, as well as Blackstar, remain essential moments in his catalog. – Raul Stanciu

(9) “Sound and Vision”

from Low (1977)

I may often wax poetic about my favorite music, and even exaggerate (yes, I have identified approximately three-hundred tunes as the “best song ever”), but I don’t use the word “genius” much when discussing even my favorite artists. That said, I’m happy to call David Bowie a genius, and not just because he managed to create astonishing tracks and albums in so many styles over the decades, culminating in a scintillating farewell to life itself with Blackstar. The true mark of his genius in my eyes, though, lies in his ability to meld out-and-out weirdness with mass pop sensibility, to a degree still unmatched. “Sound and Vision” may or may not be Bowie’s greatest song ever (editor’s note – according the indisputable wisdom of the Sputnikmusic.com staff collective, it isn’t, quite), but it does represent the pinnacle of Bowie’s peculiar ability in this regard – the contrast of the song’s bouncy groove, utterly irresistible to nearly everyone, and the total bizarreness of the “blue blue electric blue” lyrical imagery and its twee delivery is one for the ages. It’s a very strange song, and also, as I see it, a kind of meta-commentary on the creative process from one of the best who ever did it, but more than anything, it’s a fucking bop – listen to “Sound and Vision” twenty times in a row, and it still sounds just as immaculate at the end of the marathon for your ears. Say what you will about David Bowie, but that guy indeed had the sound and the vision. Don’t you wonder sometimesssssssssss? – Sunnyvale

(8) “Ashes to Ashes”

from Scary Monsters (1980)

Few Bowie songs epitomise the man’s dual flair for the conceptual and sentimental quite like “Ashes to Ashes”. Not only does it juggle a jittery new wave rhythm against some of the most stirring hooks on Scary Monsters, but its morose narrative resonates well beyond the sum of its parts — we’re treated a reprise to the Major Tom character he introduced so iconically on “Space Oddity”. Here our zany space cadet finds himself in the throes of drug addiction, and so and the once-romantic vision we were offered of him suspended endlessly in space is subverted into a sobering torture-scenario: space a devastatingly lonely canvas against which he faces his demons, antigravity a grim correlate to his feeble attempts at self-control. Bowie’s own experience as a recovered cocaine addict make for hefty subtext, but the sordid details here are underscored by what, for me, makes this such an enduringly profound song: “Ashes to Ashes” doesn’t just convey a change of perspective on the Major Tom persona, but its shift from hippyish romanticism to unflattering dysfunction offers a wider insight into the passage of time and the weight of consequence.

We hear this aesthetically — the zany strumming of “Space Oddity” has come into crystal focus, courtesy of futuristic production and a bass/keyboard intro that practically mirrors the bleeps and chimes one still imagines from a space station, a more concrete image replacing a fuzzy ideal — but, perhaps most importantly, in a hard-fought maturity that equips Bowie to deliver such stark commentary on a character whose fate could so easily have been his own. That weary refrain with its jaded play on a recycled mantra (ashes to ashes, funk to funky) carries uncommon sorrow for a song as effortlessly catchy as this, and yet, for all its grim subject matter, “Ashes to Ashes” is no sob story: this is Bowie at his most self-aware and magnetic, staring down a ghost from his past and, tapping into that unparalleled chameleon magic, refurnishing it as a personal triumph. A heavy song, but one of his best. – johnnyoftheWell

(7) “Strangers When We Meet”

from The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) and Outside (1995)

Despite having been released as a single, “Strangers When We Meet” remains more of a hidden gem in David Bowie’s discography. During an era when the legend went against everything fans were expecting from him at that point in his career, this track was perhaps the only one they could easily cling to on one of the most experimental releases David penned, 1. Outside. Even so, they needed to sit through 70 minutes of industrial-tinged art rock, until they would find this brilliant closer. Despite being a bit out of place sonic-wise, it brought a warm touch to an otherwise thrilling yet opaque record. Maybe an indirect response to his ex-wife Angela’s then-recently published memoir, the song is a bittersweet reminder of a long ended relationship and the mixed feelings you would experience when facing or thinking about that person. Mike Garson’s piano touches beautifully embellish the groovy bass lines and Reeves Gabrels’ feedback-laden leads without pushing into distorted or uncanny territory as expected on most of 1. Outside. Bowie singing in his lower register is always a treat, pouring his heart out delivering some of the most touching lyrics of his career. To the fewer listeners who discovered the 1993 soundtrack to Buddha of Suburbia, the original version of “Strangers When We Meet” lies at the center of that LP. It’s similar for the most part, but shares a tad more psychedelic atmosphere, especially on the vocals. Nevertheless, no matter which you prefer, this is one of the many overlooked gems in David’s massive catalog. – Raul Stanciu

(6) “”Heroes””

from Heroes (1977)

Alright, so “”Heroes”” may or may not be the best David Bowie song, or your favourite, or mine, but its inclusion on any best-of list is mandatory, for it is undoubtedly his most iconic (even in a world where “Space Oddity” exists). Back in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, our misfit group of teenage alternative music fanatics spent the entire film intermittently catching ““Heroes”” on the radio— the way the film tries to maintain that it takes until the literal final scene for them to learn the name of the song is an absurd conceit, puncturing every realistic overture it makes up until that point. Everyone knows “”Heroes””! Those kids had been breathing “”Heroes””; that screenplay gave some of them more “”Heroes”” than oxygen. 

Or take another, more shameful example: it’s the Edinburgh Fringe circa 2017, and I’m dishing out fliers for whichever ragtag student drama I’m with. A bored-looking bloke with an armful of who-knows-what passes by, makes eye contact, and suddenly it’s all Hey man, are you interested in- Want to see- Cool show, great people- Every day at four- This afternoon at two- Grab one of these- My flier- Flier? Flier. Ha ha ha. I snatch the glossy blue paper he’s holding before either of us have time to make a shit Mexican standoff joke. I scan the title – Like Dolphins Can Swim – and vomit up some polite interest, to the effect that:

“Yeah man, it’s a show about [Lord alone knows], and it’s named after a David Boh-ee song!”

“…oh cool!”

“Yeah…” 

“…which Bao-y song?”

The disappointment on his face was mild, but I could immediately tell it was terminal to our conversation, which had exactly enough life left in it for him to spill the beans and leave me stewing in my own newly-oozing swamp of cultural ineptitude. I bloody deserved it! Everyone in Edinburgh had been doing their best to live inside a “”Heroes””-shaped bubble all month, and I was no exception. 

Honestly, I’m not sure I trust anyone who’d deny trying to live inside of “”Heroes”” at some point, ineptly or otherwise — it’s almost bafflingly good at taking in all comers. It’s anyone’s guess why it’s so damn good at being that song, that unifying, affirmative anthem, larger-than-life enough for idealists and daydreamers, its bittersweet just for one day disclaimer sufficient for its Anything Is Possible overtures to retain water with cynics and fatalists. Part of this is steeped in the history (the song’s homage to love either side Berlin’s East/West split benefits both from its classic timeless love-against-all-odds narrative and the warm glow that still emanates both ways down the timeline from German reunification), part of it is written into the aesthetics – big ol’ rousing major chords, steady motorik beat chugging along at the kind of sauntering tempo no anxiety can withstand, a set of Robert Fripp guitar takes that could herald an angel – and part of it comes down to that all-important vocal performance and its endless, gorgeous shades of incremental pathos. 

There’s all manner of explanations to reach for, but it’s a rough task to encapsulate it in its entirety: some things are just too big for one blurb. I find it easier to get to the heart of “”Heroes”” in the fleeting moments: it’s the one my mum asks for when she’s had enough of Ziggy, the bad decision someone makes at karaoke only for you – the whole gang – to reclaim it, paving over its deceptively terrible singalong value with a howling, deafening resolve to make the bloody most of it, the one you cue when you’re tired and hungry at the end of a long week and want to fry up something lazy and draw an otherwise impossible sense of fulfilment from it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the ‘best’ Bowie song to me, or even the best for its fix – on a musical level, Bowie, Fripp and co. would later outdo themselves with this take on a triumphant modern-age rhapsody on “Teenage Wildlife” – because, by my reckoning and experience, it’s brought the most good into the world. It’s good to remember that music is a good thing. ““Heroes”” is everyone.  – johnnyoftheWell

(5) “Starman”

from The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972)

The single that set the stage for the now-classic Ziggy Stardust era, “Starman” represented a major turning point in David Bowie’s career. A lovely song, whose popularity was definitely propelled by the flamboyant fashion and acting style witnessed on the Top of the Pops performance, launched his career into the stratosphere. He already adopted the glam rock visuals, as well as over the top antics, yet the right opportunity did not show up until then for his charm to fully lock the audience in his universe. Musically, the track marks a transitioning point from the acoustic based, pop ditties of Hunky Dory, retaining that tender type melody, to the grittier rock sound that followed on the Ziggy Stardust LP and later, Aladdin Sane. Charged with a dreamy vibe amid beautiful, orchestral Mellotron touches and jangly guitars, Bowie’s vocals received a lush foundation to work their magic over. Despite scoring multiple hits over the course of his career, “Starman” remains an essential moment not only for the legendary artist, but classic rock too. – Raul Stanciu

(4) “Life on Mars?”

from Hunky Dory (1971)

“Life on Mars?” is such a little story on the face of it, a girl longing to go to the movies to escape the tawdry dullness of life for a bit, only to find that the film itself is a “saddening bore”. Nothing much, a little window into the dreary everydayness of the world and the indistinct longing for such a thing as glamor, as beauty to be real, for there to be a real escape, for there to be more than the saddening bore that fills what we so glibly call “realism”. And that’s what makes this an all-timer for Bowie, as there in the video, with his androgynous, melancholy Pagliacci visage washed out against that blank whiteness, he touched on something so poignant, so wistful, and so longing: that sense of looking at the names in lights and knowing that sometimes what’s really beautiful can’t ever be reflected in that “realism”, in the elevating of the drab and grubby. The glorious glam of that soaring guitar solo, that rupture into the mundane world of the wild, the camp, everything, in short, that glitters, everything that Bowie made himself to be, gives us the answer to our protagonist’s conundrum: yes, there is life on Mars, if only because the likes of Bowie put it there. – DadKungFu

(3) “Five Years”

from The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972)

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (woah, that’s a mouthful) is my favorite David Bowie album – and yes, I know that’s a basic bitch choice. As someone who is generally a bit of a skeptic about concept albums, it had never particularly bothered me that the story the record is intended to build around sorta fades in and out throughout the tracklist, especially since peak-era Bowie was able to imbue all the songs with a kind of magical aura which effortlessly ties them all into a cohesive whole, even if adherence to the LP’s concept is sometimes tenuous. That said, as I write about “Five Years”, I realize that, if the whole album had managed to be as thematically focused as its opener, it could’ve been even more special. After all, said opener completely envelopes the listener in its world – one slightly fantastic, but not so different from our own. The track’s build-up, from the relatively subdued to impassioned screams, is one for the ages, sure, but the lyric sheet, perhaps Bowie’s finest ever, is what really takes it to the top. The narrative is immaculate – little snapshots of ordinary people caught up in a strange apocalyptic event (“don’t think you knew you were in this song”) – and it’s deeply affecting. In the end, who cares that “Five Years” is one of the only especially focused pieces in an otherwise half-baked concept album. To me, it serves with every listen as a poignant reminder that, while we might not be alerted via a half-decade timer on the length of our remaining existence, there will always be a limit to our time on Earth, that of each and every human being. Live your life accordingly – leave society better than you found it, pursue your dreams with enthusiasm, tell your loved ones how you feel. “That’s all we got”, indeed. – Sunnyvale

(2) “Teenage Wildlife”

from Scary Monsters (1980)

Even on the days I feel the most distant from David Bowie’s music, where the unsavoury parts of his real-life character are foremost in my mind and the archness of his constant character changes make the real emotion in his work seem suffocated, I can never make myself fall out of love with “Teenage Wildlife”. At once hysterical winking self-pastiche and nakedly gutting confessional, a seven-minute re-do of “Heroes” that puts it through the postmodern wringer much as fellow Scary Monsters cut “Ashes to Ashes” did to “Space Oddity”. This time around, the yearning forbidden love song of the original gets warped into a nightmare hall-of-mirrors packed full of the man’s funniest lines – “don’t ask me, I don’t know any hallways!” – but crucially, and unlike many of Bowie’s other self-satirical swipes, keeps one foot grounded in reality. Listen to Bowie’s voice cartwheel all around its range as the track marches on to its heartbreaking conclusion, the pain in his voice as he sings “to each his own, he was another piece of teenage wildlife”, and the song takes on a tragic air – the world’s greatest rockstar, lamenting the loss of his own innocence in a storm of cocaine, bell peppers and enough characters to mount a one-man production of The Crucible. “Teenage Wildlife” is a perfect song, the indisputable centrepoint of one of Bowie’s finest albums, and a goddamn masterpiece that knocks the wind out of me every fucking time. – Rowan5215

(1) “Station to Station”

from Station to Station (1980)

“The European canon is here.” Isn’t that so? For our top pick, the title cut from 1976’s drugged-out eurofunk bastard child “Station to Station”, more than enough has been said about the legendary drug use that caused David Bowie to lay claim to not remembering much, if any, of the creation of the album. Every person who has discussed the album and its contents over the decades have made note of the mythology surrounding the era (myself now included), and for good reason. To even talk about “Station to Station” is to acknowledge it is the work of a very sick individual, one in dire need of divine intervention to break the spell his own addictions had cast upon him. At this point in time, David Bowie was undergoing a chaotic metamorphosis which, thanks in no part to his near-mythical appetite for cocaine and a non-existent diet, doubled as a psychotic break that made Bowie come apart at the seams. Within the chemically-infused psyche emerged his newest persona, The Thin White Duke. “Station to Station” doubles as a checklist for all of Bowie’s past and present fascinations: his obsession with Nietzsche and the Übermensch; the occult and a return to Crowleyesque black magic; a troubling preoccupation with fascism that informed the Thin White Duke character, but much with Ziggy Stardust, bled into the man behind the persona and blurred the lines between Bowie’s reality and the fiction he had created for himself. Cocaine, lot of cocaine as well.

It’s both intensely fascinating and troubling to listen to “Station to Station” at times, because in spite of David Bowie openly performing beneath a mask, another assumed identity, it’s the closest he ever got to making a truly autobiographical song. The absolute and total detachment from love, reality, and the people around The Thin White Duke echoes Bowie’s own severance from his surroundings, isolating himself and rejecting any feelings burgeoning from within as a consequence of his own perilous habits. So immersed in its own irony, the song continually demands a superhuman perfection, as per the Duke’s wishes, “making sure white stains” but also pondering on love or the lack therof. Bowie, in reclusion, cannot reconcile the basic function of human emotion, but insists that even without something so vital as love, his time will come. It’s frankly disturbing when you think about it, but that’s a part of the mystique. “Station to Station” is a modern day torch song, rife with dramatics to the point of absurdity. You have to wonder just how far gone Bowie is and be amazed he could get away with something like this. This is the master at the peak of his powers. – Frippertronics

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