David Bowie Research Paper

Throughout the long and dynamic history of David Bowie’s career the musician explores a vast variety of themes, narratives, personas and musical identity. Yet throughout this longevity Bowie often returned to a themes or ideas, examining these themes again or meditating on the idea through a new perspective. Concepts of time, space, youth, melancholy, and gender are all theme and ideas David Bowie has explored and returned to multiple times in his creative process. Similar to these continuing themes of exploration David Bowie has commented that his work follows a returning theme that captures “a sense of yearning for a future that we all knew would never come to pass” . This notion which Bowie also refers to as future nostalgia is a significant
and an important overall theme within the entirety of Bowie career and musical discography. In examining works from Low, and the songs of Heroes, Golden Years, Ashes to Ashes and Changes the idea of future nostalgia come to light in a variety of ways. By completing a close analysis of 5 different songs throughout Bowie’s work this paper will examine how the themes of future nostalgia is explored in different factors of Bowie’s work and the themes overall impact on the music. The term future nostalgia is a contradictory idea when breaking it down into separate semiotics as nostalgia is defined as a missing of a past moment – a sentimental longing and affection for a past happy period or place of a personal association.
It is the wanting to return to a past memory or place in time, therefore when nostalgia is place in relation to the future the definition transforms. The notion of nostalgia becomes transforms to be a feeling of sentimental longing and affection for a future moment. Future nostalgia can be broken down into the concept that one is missing something that hasn’t happened yet. Although, one feel like it is something they’ve already experienced and missing or wishing to be back in that moment. Placed in relation to Bowie’s quoted thought on his work, the concept of future nostalgia grows one sept further into a yearning and missing of something that has yet to happen that one knows will never be
achieved. When examining Bowies work and where the theme of future nostalgia truly come to light this can be found throughout the whole of the album Low. It was in relation to Low that notion of future nostalgia really emerges. Arguably, this sense of yearning for the future as a narrative attributed to the album of Low as a whole. The largely instrumental album is driving by a total sense on yearning and waiting for something new and different. The lyric that are composed within the album, as well as the musical accompaniment drive the representation and give an understanding of what future nostalgia is for Bowie.
The album Low is David Bowie’s eleventh studio album and released in 1977. It was created shortly after the completion of Station to Station as Bowie moved away from the drug fuelled scene of Los Angeles to the city of Berlin to recover for a cocaine addiction. The album is described by Hugo Wilcken as introverted waiting and autistic in the rage of narrative . There is a perpetual repeating of motions within the album, is provide that notion that as a collective Bowie and the listeners are waiting for something to happen. This can be identified quiet simply within some of the track titles; Always Crashing in the Same Car, A New Career in a New Town, and so on. He being stuck in perpetual experience leads to yearning. The fragmented lyrics of Low highlight the idea of waiting for something to happen, as the album is described as the ultimate teenage retreat into your bedroom alone. The song connects to the realization of teenage obsessive consumption of cultural as they feel the full effects of future nostalgia. As a large part of being a teenager is the meditation on something outside of their own current experience, a wishing to be older, to be independent, to be somewhere other than the drudges of your hometown.
The song Always Crashing in the Same Car off of Low exemplify the albums repeated motions and the yearning for something new.
The song narrative express the frustration of making the same mistake over and over again. In the song describes a moment of driving at a high speed in a circle of a hotel garage and as the title alludes to, crashing the car. Although the song connected to an incident during the height of Bowie cocaine addiction in which he did repeatedly crash his own car into another. Although the song drives more meaning than simply a recounting of Bowie’s car crash. As the lyrics state; “Every chance/ every chance that I take/ I take it on the road/I was always looking left and right/ Oh, but I’m always crashing/ in the same car” . The song outlines how Bowie strives to change his path, to change the outcome – I look life and right, yet the same outcome keeps happening, he continues to crash the car. Always Crashing in the Same Car becomes a recognition that although he is yearning to change is course and stop making the same mistake he known that it is a yearning that will not come to pass. As Bowie will continue to crash in the same car the song truly outline the notion of future nostalgia. As the song outlines the wishing for different future outcome this will never fulfilled as the same outcome is doomed to
happen.
As Always Crashing in the Same Car highlights the acceptance lack of fruition within future nostalgia the Sound and Vision truly highlights the complete yearning and longing for something new. Also off of the Low album Sound and Vision immediately precedes Always Crashing on the record. The song is a short minimal track in which the vocals do not join the music until the halfway mark. The song’s up beat and uplifting instrumental is juxtaposed with the lyrics introverted and withdrawn style. In Wicken’s 33 ¾ publication on Low the text repeatedly draws on the themes of introversion, obsession and withdrawn action as a major narrative to the album . Furthermore, the text describes the album as a complete emulation of teenage obsessive, withdrawn consumption and meditation . The lyrics of Sound and Vision, outline a simple waiting of something to happen. The song describes an action introversion and withdrawn as the narrator is wishing a waiting for something new to arrive. As the lyrics state;
“Blue, blue, electric blue/ That’s the colour of my room where I will live/Blue, blue/ Pale blinds, drawn all day/ Nothing to do, nothing to say/ Blue, blue/ I will sit right down/ Waiting for the gift of sound and vision” The song outlines the disconnection from ones surrounding in order to become completely absorbed with something that seems better. Through enacting a withdraw nature the narrator focuses on a complete waiting and yearning for something better to come, for the gift of sound and vision can happen. Sound and Vision following the ideas of future nostalgia as it highlight the aspect of yearning and longer for a future moment that is essential to the notion of future nostalgia. Although the theme of future nostalgia is a major discourse on Low, the ides continues to run throughout the rest of Bowie’s discography. Following chronologically in the Berlin Trilogy the album Heroes continues to delve into this concept. Released in 1977 the title track off of Heroes is one of Bowie’s best known and most recognizable songs. The title song has a triumphant musical score as it reflect on the history of the Berlin wall. It is said that the song inspiration derives from an image of a couple sharing an intimate moment by the Berlin Wall. This romantic imagery drives the music’s triumphant and conquering musical feeling yet the lyric provide a bitter sweetness to the work. Although the song has moments of hope and lightness the works refrain returns to Bowie’s notion of future nostalgia. The track Heroes as a whole provides an atmosphere or feeling of nostalgia for the listener. Lines from the song such as; “I, I will be king/ And you, you will be queen ” as well as “I, I wish I could swim/ Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim ” reveal the narrators longing and wishing to become something different and better than themselves. Verses such as these throughout the song displays the narrators longing and hope that these ideas could be achieved in the future. Further still, the narrator stresses his yearning that he and his partner “Could be heroes” continuing his wish to be something great. This longing for something better falls into the notion of future nostalgia. The evidence of future nostalgia is drawn out further in Heroes as the narrator, throughout the song address that the longing he has can never be achieved. Thus providing the bitter sweet element off the track as Bowie outlines all of the possibilities he wishes for the couple this hope is followed with the recognition that it will never happen; “Yes we’re lovers, and that is that/ Though noting, will keep us together” and “We’re nothing, and nothing will help us” . Although the narrators longs for the couples to be something great he is aware that their love is nothing great and will never be what he is longing for, thus exemplifying Bowie’s theme of future nostalgia. Yet the song as a whole does end on a hopeful notes as narrator hopes that maybe “they could be heroes/ just for one day”. Although the couple will never achieve the long lasting greatness they are yearning for, perhaps one single day will suffices. The work of Heroes fits into Bowie’s theme of future nostalgia yet, unlike other songs that