‘Sound and Vision’: The defining song that proved David Bowie’s genius
When David Bowie fled to Berlin, the decision was far less arbitrary than it perhaps seemed to an outsider without context. At the time, the kaleidoscopic hues of the singer’s life had become displaced by a stronger, more looming shade of grey that seemed only to grow larger the longer he put off pressing pause. Eventually, he needed an escape. “I was wanting to be put in a little cold room with omnipotent blue on the walls and blinds on the windows,” he said.
Berlin became the ideal hideaway. Not only did it enable Bowie respite from the relentless bustle of America, it also provided him with the space and time to re-evaluate what actually mattered, and how he could learn to reconstruct his artist identity built around a refreshed perspective, one without the raucous perils of substance abuse and crafted in a place with dark history and a vibrant creative underground scene.
Unlike Station to Station, Bowie would actually remember writing and recording Low, a record that came together in the crucial stages of his renewed mindset in a city brimming with possibility, with choices to extend and enhance his own artistic identity ranging from its complex sociopolitical contexts to the cinematic and musical responses that defined it—like German expressionism. Despite its subtlety, at least regarding Bowie’s ability to float below the radar, it also felt central to everything worthwhile.
As he once said, “It was the artistic and cultural gateway of Europe in the twenties and virtually anything important that happened in the arts happened there.” Low was the first iteration of this exposure, with the lead single, ‘Sound and Vision’, signalling the new direction with effortless charm and an indescribably extraordinary sonic journey from start to finish that feels overwhelmingly akin to the metamorphosis from America’s dull, unwavering excess to Europe’s effervescent rekindling.
This joy comes through immediately with the extended instrumental section that jumps and jilts like a clear-headed lover, likely mirroring exactly how Bowie felt at the time about his sudden rush of enthusiasm. It’s also difficult to ignore the accessibility of these arrangements, with different facets that might seem paradoxical on paper coming together in ways that delight and add extra meaning, no matter how subtle. Almost like the rain after a long drought that grows heavier with the satisfaction it incites.
However, Bowie’s true ingenuity comes through once the lyrics appear. The song, which many immediately view as something cathartic and inexplicably upbeat, was also once described by Bowie as one of the saddest songs he ever wrote, arriving at a time when he had to “drag myself out of an awful period of my life”. ‘Sound and Vision’ was his respite as much as a reminder of his own demons, a tone bolstered in the track by the singer’s restless search for “the gift of sound and vision” when everything around seemed bleak and cold to the touch.
Interestingly, ‘Sound and Vision’ was initially intended to be an instrumental track, meaning that Bowie’s decision to overlay lyrics and give it an additional meaning came later, almost as an afterthought. Had he not added the words, the sound would have remained one that evokes lighthearted sentimentality, even if somewhere in its cracks the note of melancholy still lurked, unchained by any decipherable vernacular pointing to one emotion or the other. This choice to add a narrative layer only made it more enticing, providing a dialogue between several unknown entities about the price and perils of the loss of self.
Above all else, ‘Sound and Vision’ feels like an interim track, not necessarily sonically but in what it seeks out to achieve and what it asks of the listener. From the moment it begins, the arrangements feel as though they’re beckoning a deeper period of contemplation, not in the heady way it perhaps seems once the meaning of the track becomes clear but in the way it dances around and towards its own purpose, like a soft venture into the untouched corners of the mind, casual and resigned, yet strident all the same. In other words, it wasn’t just Bowie searching for greatness; it was the very notion of it pouring out of his soul like sunlight cracking through storm-laden rainclouds.
