Genius idiocy: Iggy Pop’s three favourite David Bowie songs of all time
When it comes to great friendships in rock music, few people are as thick as thieves as David Bowie and Iggy Pop were together, especially during the late 1970s. After the Stooges disbanded for a second time in 1974, Pop took a brief break from releasing music before returning with The Idiot in 1977, which saw the singer adopt a much more art rock-oriented sound than the garage punk that he had worked on in his previous band.
A large amount of this dramatic shift was due to the influence of Bowie, and the direction that he was taking around the same time saw him release a string of career-defining records in Station to Station, Low and Heroes. The larger presence of electronics on Bowie-produced The Idiot divided opinion at the time, although since Bowie’s Low was released to acclaim a mere few months earlier, RCA rushed to release the album in an effort to capitalise on the two close friends having released similar-sounding records.
But the duo weren’t simply copying each other’s homework, and were dramatically influencing each other for several years. The twosome were both struggling with drug addictions in the mid-1970s, and chose to move to Berlin together in an effort to escape the worlds they had unfortunately found themselves in. This fresh start ultimately saw both of them enter the most fruitful periods of their respective careers.
While Bowie’s desire to become more commercially successful eventually pushed the two further apart when Bowie recorded Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980, it didn’t sever the respect that the two artists had for one another. He had, up until this point, remained a fan of what Pop was doing creatively and would pay tribute to his work on multiple occasions.
On his 1979 episode of the BBC Radio 1 programme Star Special, Bowie claimed that Pop’s ‘TV Eye’ was one of his favourite songs of all time, and he would revisit the song ‘China Girl’ that he helped Pop write for The Idiot for a cover that featured on his 1983 album, Let’s Dance. In 1984, the Bowie/Pop connection strengthened again, and on Bowie’s follow-up album Tonight, he recorded three more covers of Iggy Pop tracks, with ‘Don’t Look Down’, ‘Tonight’ and ‘Neighborhood Threat’ all making it onto the album. Bowie and Pop co-wrote two further pieces on the album, and Iggy loaned his vocals to the closing track, ‘Dancing With the Big Boys’ as well.
However, despite this strong connection having reformed in the mid-1980s, Pop’s favourite era of Bowie’s work remained the records he produced in the ‘70s, especially during the mid-period of the decade. In a 2023 interview with Uncut, where Pop was asked to list his favourite songs of all time, he picked three tracks from his late friend’s catalogue, opting for two songs from Station to Station and one from Low while the two were living in Berlin together.
From the former album, ‘Wild is the Wind’ and ‘Stay’ both made the cut, showcasing the two disparate moods of the album, while ‘Sound and Vision’ was the choice from Low that made it onto Pop’s list. All three of these tracks demonstrate just how versatile Bowie was as an artist and highlight exactly what it was that drew the two artists together to work on some of their finest works during their period of respite and recovery in Berlin.
Iggy Pop’s three favourite David Bowie songs
- ‘Wild is the Wind’
- ‘Stay’
- ‘Sound and Vision’
