The four David Bowie songs inspired by George Orwell
George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of the most influential books ever written, consistently quoted and referenced within art and media, from the popular reality show Big Brother to songs by Radiohead, Stevie Wonder and David Bowie.
Written in 1949, shortly after the end of World War Two, Orwell used his book to critique authoritarianism and totalitarianism, warning readers of what could become of humanity when our freedom and rights are taken away, intensely surveyed and controlled. The novel’s sentiments have rang true for decades since, and despite being over 70 years old, Orwell’s tale feels as prevalent as ever today, especially in an era dominated by social media.
Nineteen Eighty-Four was one of Bowie’s favourite books, so much so he tried to turn it into a musical. Bowie once described his childhood home in Bromley, saying, “You always felt you were in Nineteen Eighty-Four. That’s the kind of gloom and immovable society that a lot of us felt we grew up in… It was a terribly inhibiting place.”
Enamoured by Orwell’s book, Bowie sought the adaptation rights from Orwell’s wife, Sonia, who was reluctant to allow the musician to add his own flair to the story. In an interview with Circus magazine, Bowie revealed, “For a person who married a socialist with communist leanings, she was the biggest upper-class snob I’ve ever met in my life. ‘Good heavens, put it to music?’ It really was like that.”
Unable to make his Nineteen Eighty-Four musical, Bowie instead used the novel as inspiration for his own dystopian story, which eventually came to fruition on his 1974 album Diamond Dogs. He was also influenced by the writer William S. Burroughs, combining the themes and techniques used by these writers to create the follow-up to Pin-Ups.
Diamond Dogs features multiple tracks that bear direct influence from Orwell’s novel. Beginning with the opener ‘Future Legend’, Bowie introduces us to “Hunger City”, his own version of dystopia, where people are compared to “packs of dogs.” Although many of these lines are inspired by words from Burrough’s Naked Lunch, the image he paints is distinctively Orwellian.
However, there are three tracks on side two in which Bowie explicitly references Nineteen Eighty-Four. ‘We Are the Dead’ is named after a line from the book, which was most likely inspired by the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae. Talking to Mojo in 2002, Bowie explained his preoccupation with dystopia. “I’m saying the same thing a lot, which is about this sense of self-destruction. I think you can see the apocalyptic thing as the manifestation of an interior problem. There’s a real nagging anxiety in there somewhere, and I probably develop those anxieties in a ‘faction’ [fact/fiction] structure.”
The musician lays out his Orwellian inspiration even more directly with the tracks ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’. On the former, Bowie sings lines like “They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air/ And tell you that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care,” alluding to the novel’s themes of manipulation and brainwashing.
While we will never get a Bowie-made Nineteen Eighty-Four musical, we can enjoy these tracks instead, which tease what could’ve emerged if the permission to adapt the book had been granted.
The David Bowie songs inspired by George Orwell:
- ‘Future Legend’
- ‘1984’
- ‘Big Brother’
- ‘We Are the Dead’
