The David Bowie song he believed had no direction: “I don’t think I had a focus”
Expecting David Bowie to stay in one lane throughout his prime was like asking Keith Moon to settle down a little bit… you can try, but you won’t get anywhere. As much as Bowie may have liked the idea of working in one genre, he was just as likely to reject it a few albums later to go on his next musical adventure. While many know him as the eternal ‘Starman’ in his glam rock prime, Bowie wasn’t actually off to the best start at the beginning of his career.
When Bowie first hit the scene, the psychedelic movement was still the order of the day, with everyone growing their hair long and talking about the flowery side of rock and roll. Bowie needed to stand out from the pack, and he seemed to find his answer in 1967 by making the oddest rock songs one could ever imagine.
Across his actual debut, David Bowie, the man who would later christen himself ‘The Thin White Duke’, is completely out of his element. There are the makings of decent Bowie songs, but every track on the album feels like Boie trying on a different musical costume, none of which fit him very well.
When the first album doesn’t work, do the next best thing… pull a mulligan and try it again. His second self-titled album was later named after the track ‘Space Oddity’, which is unofficially the first “real” David Bowie song. Bowie had written other pieces before, but it’s easy to imagine that this was the first time he fell to Earth rather than the vaudeville crooner he somehow insisted he wanted to be.
Outside of the big single, most of the album provides little glimpses into what Bowie could do. There are still a few leftover sounds from his debut on a few songs, but the expansive side of the record, like ‘God Knows I’m Good’ and ‘Cygnet Committee’, showcased Bowie as a worthy talent who might be able to match the same levels as other rock giants.
Like all first outings, though, it looked a lot worse in retrospect for Bowie, recalling in The Complete David Bowie, “[Space Oddity is] kind of iffy, in that musically it never really had a direction… I don’t think that I, as the artist, had a focus about where it should go.” It’s OK not to have a direction at first, but Bowie’s entire career was shaped by him not being tied down to one direction.
Even though he could have made millions by becoming a nostalgia act that played ‘Changes’ and ‘Life on Mars?’ every night, the best elements of his career were when he was taking risks. From hearing him dabble in pop on Let’s Dance to embracing the sounds of drum and bass music in the 1990s on Earthling, Bowie slowly started to put together what he wanted himself to sound like at every venture.
If anything, tying himself to one genre would have seemed tremendously boring after a while, especially considering the amount of music we would have had to hear that rewrote ‘The Jean Genie’ one more time. Bowie was about more than music, and his bravery to work outside of his comfort zone can serve as a great lesson for any artist looking to expand their artistic horizons.
