The David Bowie song he called “a piece of sexist rock ‘n’ roll”
It is only natural to think that an artist would be on top of the world after releasing the most commercially successful album of their career. However, David Bowie was nothing if not unique. After arriving with the mega-hit that was 1983’s Let’s Dance, his best-selling record, the British musician entered a period so bleak creatively that it would give him his self-described “nadir”.
Famously, Let’s Dance was produced by one of the most effective hitmakers of all time, Chic leader Nile Rodgers, and was coloured by the timeless guitar work of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, blending dance-rock, new wave and post-disco into a triumphant mix. It saw the album go to number one on both sides of the Atlantic, and Bowie became a bonafide worldwide superstar.
Despite this commercial peak, Let’s Dance began a chapter of creative deficiency for Bowie, wherein he fell out of love with his art. He later looked back on this period with intense disdain, with his duo of following albums, 1984’s Tonight and 1987’s Never Let Me Down, the two he hated most from his extensive career. Reflecting negatively on this era, he described it as his “Phil Collins years”.
Although Bowie thought Tonight did have some redeemable aspects, it was its successor, Never Let Me Down, that the singer loathed more than any other release. He went as far as to describe it as his lowest artistic moment and even the “nadir” of his entire career. Bowie said: “My nadir was Never Let Me Down. It was such an awful album.”
Regardless of the above distinction between his 1984 and 1987 albums, Bowie was still critical of Tonight. Demonstrating this, despite the single ‘Blue Jean’ emerging as a transatlantic hit and one of the only two songs on the album written solely by him, Bowie seemed unbothered by the material. He dismissed it as nothing more than a “piece of sexist rock ‘n’ roll”, which lacked any of his traditionally cerebral edge.
In David Bowie – The Interview, given to EMI America in 1987, Bowie explained: “‘Blue Jean’ is a piece of sexist rock ‘n’ roll. [laughs] It’s about picking up birds. It’s not very cerebral, that piece.”
Before this, Bowie had revealed that the song was inspired by the music of the 1950s, particularly that of Eddie Cochran. Only days after Tonight arrived, he told the NME: “‘Blue Jean’ reminds me of Eddie Cochran. It was inspired from that Eddie Cochran feeling, but that of course is very Troggs as well. I dunno… It’s quite eclectic, I suppose. What of mine isn’t?”
It wasn’t just David Bowie who wasn’t too keen on ‘Blue Jean’. When the songwriter asked Tonight co-producer Hugh Padgham which of his new songs was his least favourite, he said it was ‘Blue Jean’. In Dylan Jones’ 2017 oral biography of the British musician David Bowie: A Life, Padgham affirmed his stance, saying: “I didn’t really like ‘Blue Jean’, as I thought it was really lightweight”.
