David Bowie named “two of the worst lines” he ever wrote
The career of David Bowie was always an ever-evolving process. Even though ‘The Starman’ could have stuck with any one of his many personas and become one of the most significant artists known to man, he was just as willing to restructure himself to fit with the times, either making songs that played into different fashions or consciously going in the opposite direction. Though Bowie could play many different styles of music, sometimes his sounds were better suited to what was going on later down the line.
Before the rock and roll alien had fully fallen to Earth, Bowie was still strumming an acoustic guitar, playing songs that felt indebted to the 1960s folk movement rather than his glam rock alter ego. While Bowie would eventually reinvent himself after his baroque pop-flavoured debut album, one song he had sat on for years was ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’.
Being a wistful ode to a lover, the song features the subtle quirks prevalent in most of Bowie’s music, including subtle lifts in the track that were uncommon for the time. Even though the song didn’t have a proper place on any of Bowie’s first albums, he resurrected it in the late 1990s when working on his album, Toy.
While the sessions for the album wouldn’t be properly released until years later, Bowie included a stab at ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ again. It’s not like this move didn’t make sense, considering how well Bowie had restructured the song ‘The Prettiest Star’ from his early career into the bombastic song from Aladdin Sane.
While Toy remains a decent mystery for anyone fascinated with Bowie’s work, he never thought that much of the final version of his older tune. Despite the different structure of the piece, Bowie would later admit that the song contained some of the worst lyrics he had ever committed to tape.
When performing on VH1 Storytellers, Bowie remembered how awful the original version of the tune sounded to him, saying, “It’s a beautiful piece of solipsism; it’s called ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’. And it does contain, though some might disagree, one of the worst… two of the worst lines I’ve ever written. I actually have to sing this: ‘My girl calls my name. ‘Hi, Dave. Drop in, come back, see you around, if you’re this way again’”.
Then again, Bowie was known to be quite harsh in his original lyrics. Before he had come up with the fantastic lyrics for his breakthrough track ‘Life on Mars?’, Bowie would recall putting together an original lyric for the tune called ‘Even a Fool Learns to Love’ before the song got rejected in favour of the lyrics which would become the song ‘My Way’.
Shit lyrics aside, ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ does have its fair share of surprises in its restructured form as well. Fed through the modern lens, Bowie feels more assured singing the track, as if he’s greeting an old friend from the past as he sings every word. Even though Bowie had made years of progress since writing this song, the updated version of ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ feels more like a testament to how far he had come as a songwriter and performer.
