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The 20 Greatest David Bowie Singles

David Bowie’s best songs proved his quest to turn and face the strange never ceased.

The 20 Greatest David Bowie Singles

If any single thread connected David Bowie’s now sadly completed half century-long musical journey, it was irrepressible restlessness. Bowie never, ever stopped exploring new musical avenues, which has historically been interpreted in one of two ways: that he was rock’s ultimate chameleon, refusing to be contented with any past success and constantly pushing himself to reach new heights, or that he was a shallow trend-hopping whore who parlayed a keen ear for ever-shifting popular music trends into commercial success.

If it’s ever permissible to call pop artists geniuses, then Bowie is indubitably among them; the fact that he managed to remain a giant of popular culture for decades while completely overhauling his sound every few years is a testament to that. To dismiss him as a mere copycat would be like calling the Boeing 747 a piece of hackwork because the Wright brothers existed. Marc Bolan may have been wearing makeup and playing glammy guitar first, but he didn’t come up with the invention that was Ziggy Stardust. Kraftwerk may have pioneered the cold, cerebral electronic aesthetic that influenced Bowie during his Berlin period, but they never wrote “Heroes.”

These 20 singles, not all of them chart hits, but invariably essential entries in the rock canon, span from Bowie’s first iconic song to enter the public consciousness in 1969 to the remarkable title track from his just barely pre-posthumous swan song, Blackstar, thus proving that his quest to turn and face the strange never ceased so long as there was a breath left in him. Jeremy Winograd


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20. “I’m Afraid of Americans”

The late 1980s and ’90s are consistently regarded as Bowie’s dark ages, and “I’m Afraid of Americans” may be his sole classic of the period. Co-written with Brian Eno and featuring Trent Reznor, the song was an unveiled appropriation of the industrial rock sound Reznor helped to pioneer. Bowie returns to the familiar lyrical point of view of an alien among terrestrials, only this time his avatar is unable to escape the reach of American corporate brands and culture. The song also, of course, benefits from the slick polish of major-label capital. Such is the ambivalence of the Bowie brand. Benjamin Aspray


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19. “Let’s Dance”

“Let’s Dance” may not be the best song Bowie ever released, but it’s one of his most irresistible, boasting a brass chorus riffing over a bouncy synth backbeat, all leading to a classic Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar solo. The track exposed Bowie to an entire new audience of post-disco-obsessed clubgoers in the early ’80s, raising the singer’s international profile and, thanks in part to the song’s music video, setting the stage for his increasingly vocal protests against apartheid in South Africa and racial tensions across the Western world. While “Let’s Dance” reinvented Bowie for a younger audience, his timeless message of tolerance and commitment to cross-genre musical exploration never changed. Jesse Nee-Vogelman

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18. “Diamond Dogs”

Bowie’s many and prodigious talents have been praised and written about ad infinitum, especially in the wake of his death, but one that perhaps hasn’t gotten enough attention is his guitar playing. On his first post-Spiders from Mars album, Diamond Dogs, he played virtually all the guitar parts himself, and on its rollicking title track, he managed to work up an entirely convincing Sticky Fingers/Exile on Main St.-era Rolling Stones pastiche all by his lonesome (that’s him playing the prominent sax parts too). Winograd


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17. “Modern Love”

“Modern Love” was instrumental in Bowie’s ’80s pop comeback, a song that brought his trademark incongruous combination of hesitant, doubt-filled lyrics and self-assured, energetic musicality to a newer, shinier, tackier decade. It’s such a perfect expression of the contradictory emotions behind contemporary relations that it served as the background music for not one, but two iconic cinematic expressions of such tension, in Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang, and a later homage in Frances Ha. No song better serves frustrated dancing on the street. Nee-Vogelman


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16. “Sound and Vision”

While Low is one of Bowie’s most engaging, experimental, and ambitious albums, it isn’t his most listenable. Lead single “Sound and Vision,” by contrast, worked within a traditional rock framework to deliver one of the most successful singles of Bowie’s career, contrasting Bowie’s removed sensual musings on color with catchy guitar and synth work. “Sound and Vision” exemplifies all that made Bowie great; it’s effortless, intellectual, affecting, and easy to dance to. Years later, Bowie would call “Sound and Vision” his “ultimate retreat song,” a portal away from writer’s block and a struggle with cocaine toward a new, vast world of musical creation. Nee-Vogelman


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15. “Ashes to Ashes”

As far as shocking reveals in sequels to beloved space operas go, “We know Major Tom’s a junkie” ranks right up there with “I am your father.” “Ashes to Ashes” doesn’t share much in common with “Space Oddity” musically; with its doinky synths and popping bass, it’s about as redolent of 1980 as the hippie folk of its predecessor was of 1969. Tying the songs together, though, is Bowie’s brilliantly despondent vocal performance, channeling his sorrow that the drug culture he envisioned in his famous parable at the dawn of the ’70s came true by decade’s end. Winograd

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14. “Beauty and the Beast”

Bowie’s Berlin trilogy may get a rap for contemplative artsiness, but the middle album, Heroes, in fact opened with the most adrenaline-inducing and just plain-fun song he’d done since “Suffragette City.” Pounding piano and belching guitar, courtesy of a then-briefly-retired Robert Fripp, provide a pulsating backdrop as Bowie croons in an uncharacteristic baritone range and a chorus of high-pitched backup singers provides ecstatic interjections. “My, my,” indeed. Winograd


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13. “Under Pressure”

While “Under Pressure” may be more synonymous with Queen than Bowie, his vocals lend the song its distinctive cynical edge, complicating what would otherwise be just another soaring, Queen sing-a-long. Bowie’s knack for elusive melodies and unconventional delivery blended perfectly with Queen’s unrestrained pop exuberance. It’s no coincidence that Bowie’s section contains the word “terror,” as his dark, enigmatic persona drives his underappreciated yet essential contribution to what might be the most frequently played song in his entire catalogue. Nee-Vogelman


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12. “Starman”

Bowie already had a hit in 1969’s “Space Oddity,” and 1971’s Hunky Dory made a lot of money for RCA, but according to Spiders from Mars bassist Trevor Bolder, it was performing “Starman” on Top of the Pops that launched him into bona-fide stardom. Fittingly, the song that introduced the world to Ziggy Stardust was about a pop star, sung from the perspective of two young soon-to-be fans thrilling to his “hazy cosmic jive” over the airwaves, delivered via handclapped pop perfection. Aspray


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11. “TVC15”

By 1976, the dark side of psychedelia was firmly established in pop culture, and “TVC15” was emblematic of the genre. Inspired by Iggy Pop’s drug-induced hallucination that Bowie’s TV set was eating his girlfriend, “TVC15” is as joyous as it is nightmarish. As lavish layers of phase-shifted guitar drones and music-hall pianos undulate under and around him, Bowie’s hapless protagonist begs the “quadrophonic,” “hologrammic” boob tube of the title to return his inamorata, crying, “She’s my main feature!” Aspray

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10. “Golden Years”

The lead single off of Station to Station, “Golden Years,” as Bowie so often was, is a bit weird for Top 40 fare. Snappy as it is, the song is stylistically stuck somewhere between the soul and funk trappings that Bowie explored on the preceding Young Americans and the cold, electronic-tinged Euro-rock of his Berlin trilogy. It also features possibly the most delightful and intriguing studio vocal tracks in Bowie’s oeuvre; all the overdubbed Davids, from the suave verse delivery to the chanted chorus refrains to the high-pitched instances of the word “angel,” sound like they were all sampled from different songs. Somehow, when all thrown together, they merge seamlessly. Winograd


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9. “Rebel Rebel”

“Rebel Rebel” is Bowie par excellence. It begins with Bowie’s best-known riff, the lyrics broach willful androgyny in the first verse, and by the close of the chorus, his misfit romanticism is no less audacious than the declaration, “Hot tramp, I love you so!” Celebrations of gender play were hardly rare in the glitter explosion of the early ’70s, nor was making it a, well, rebel pose. But Bowie abjured the macho overcompensation of even Mick Jagger, his new friend and paramour, assuring his proto-punk prince(ss) that (s)he’s worthy of love, “tacky,” torn dress and all. Aspray


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8. “Blackstar”

How perfectly apt that the first of Bowie’s last releases before shuffling off this mortal coil is a 10-minute puzzle box of a song. So far we’ve figured out it’s about death; whether “blackstar” refers to a cancerous tumor, or whether the whole thing’s actually about ISIS, we’ll have to continue to debate. More important is the seamless synthesis of glitchy rhythms, Jewish chamber jazz, blue-eyed R&B, and funereal vocals into the kind of haunting pop half-breed Bowie had seemingly left behind in the ’70s. Aspray


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7. “Station to Station”

Before “Blackstar,” there was “Station to Station,” Bowie’s first 10-minute foray into elliptical gnostic imagery and multi-stage songwriting. The first half is dissonant, smirking krautrock, punctuated by melodica; the second is ecstatic, camped-up guitar boogie. On “Station to Station” he gave a name to the Thin White Duke. The hairpin shift in tempo halfway, mimetically “a side effect of the cocaine,” could also stand for Bowie’s artistic transition, only in reverse: Station to Station divided Bowie’s glam period and his heady, milk-and-red-peppers-fueled Berlin era. Aspray

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6. “Changes”

“Changes” is Exhibit A in the case for why charges that Bowie was never more than a shallow trend-hopper have been greatly exaggerated. The song was allegedly a bald attempt to imitate the style of ’50s and ’60s British lounge singer Anthony Newley. Few remember Newley now (though he did co-write “Goldfinger”), but we can all sing along to the enduring pop genius of “Changes.” The stuttered chorus, the imploring to “turn and face the strange” that turned out to be a statement of purpose for his entire career—“Changes” may have originated as a mere tribute, but Bowie turned it into something entirely timeless and his own. Winograd


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5. “Young Americans”

Young Americans marked a transition away from Ziggy Stardust to Bowie’s experiments as the Thin White Duke, a slickly dressed, disenchanted, cocaine-huffing master of ’70s soul music. The album’s eponymous lead single referenced Richard Nixon, American racial tensions, and a prescient understanding of 1970s historical standing as a disillusioned, indulgent reaction to 1960s idealism, all atop one of the decade’s best examples of sax-heavy blue-eyed soul. The juxtaposition between melancholy lyrics and infectious rhythm, one of Bowie’s signature techniques, helped cement the singer as a major musical force in the United States, where it was his second biggest single to date. Nee-Vogelman


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4. “Life on Mars?”

Bowie is often rightly credited with introducing hitherto unexplored levels of theatricality to rock, usually in connection with his wild stage outfits and that one time he mimed fellatio on Mick Ronson’s Les Paul. “Life on Mars?” and its show-tune-grade piano-and-strings melodrama is proof that his sense of grandeur could be well-exercised in the studio as well. The song contains a few of Bowie’s most memorable lines, “Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow” among them, and features the singer sounding cynical enough about the commoditization of entertainment to leave the planet entirely. But once he hits the money note on the chorus, it would have hardly mattered if he’d just been reading the phonebook during the verses. Winograd


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3. “Heroes”

Released in 1977, “Heroes” was an inspirational pillar in a time of turmoil, and Bowie’s legendary performance of the song in West Berlin in 1987 would later come to symbolize a turning tide in the Cold War and the reconciliation of East and West Berlin. Almost 40 years after its release, “Heroes,” co-written by Brian Eno, continues to ride Bowie’s uncharacteristically warm vocals and easy, hypnotic guitar to prominence in ads, soundtracks, and radio stations across the world. Nee-Vogelman

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2. “Space Oddity”

As the world awaited the launch of the Apollo 11 mission, Bowie tapped into the Western world’s hopes and fears for the future of humanity with “Space Oddity” to catapult himself to international superstardom. Major Tom, the song’s hero, who would go on to appear in several other Bowie songs over the years, floats through space over one of 1969’s most infectious choruses, a dazzling homage to the grand potential inherent in the vastness of space, and the potential in Bowie’s burgeoning career. Nee-Vogelman


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1. “Suffragette City”

Bowie and the Spiders’ casual stoner dialect, the iconic, chill-inducing “wham, bam thank you ma’am” breakdown, even the hilariously misheard “This mellow-thighed chick/The smell of fat chicks” line—on Ziggy Stardust’s walloping, breakneck climax, these are all but secondary concerns. The true central thrust of “Suffragette City” is Mick Ronson’s monstrous guitar tone. Sounding like a turbo-charged chainsaw crossed with a rocket engine, Ronson’s preposterously crunchy riffage is one of the greatest achievements in the history of the electric guitar. Winograd

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