The 1981 song David Bowie insisted on not singing
There was never any sense in limiting what David Bowie was going to do.
He was used to making any kind of music that fell into his head, and even if he wasn’t one of the most fashionable artists in the early stages of his career, you’d be hard pressed to find any moment past 1972 when he didn’t look like one of the single coolest rock and roll stars in the world. But part of being ahead of the game like Bowie meant knowing when to say no to some of the biggest names in the world as well.
Because as much as Bowie loved the idea of collaborating, it was going to have to be the right person whenever he decided to work on something new. He could have a better back and forth with John Lennon or Nile Rodgers whenever they played together, and even when someone like Bing Crosby tried to get together with him for a Christmas classic, ‘The Starman’ needed to have his arm twisted a little bit so that he could agree to sing with him.
It was nothing personal, but Bowie had that sixth sense when he realised that some songs didn’t suit his voice all that well. ‘All the Young Dudes’ may have worked wonders for both him and Mott the Hoople, but the whole glam-rock pastiche in the lyrics was always meant to be a vehicle for Ian Hunter. But when Bowie came face-to-face with a band like Queen, no one could have imagined how ‘Under Pressure’ eventually panned out.
The song is one of the greatest duets in rock and roll history, and even if the tension was a bit much in the studio, that didn’t stop Bowie and Freddie Mercury from being professional when working off each other. Each of them wanted to make the song as great as it could be, but the fact that it’s so good almost makes you forget how it’s connected to one of the most lacklustre Queen records of all time.
That’s not to say that Hot Space is terrible by any stretch. I’ve certainly heard worse experiments where rock and roll bands tried to embrace dance music, but compared to the other records in the band’s catalogue, it’s harder to really stomach songs that weren’t exactly working well right out of the gate like ‘Back Chat’. But if anything, the album could have been interesting if Bowie had stuck around to turn ‘Cool Cat’ into something bigger than it already was.
The minimalist sound of the record was a lot less than what most Queen fans would have wanted, but Bowie initially was supposed to be on the record before he eventually asked to have his voice removed. And considering the kind of material that Bowie was working on at the time, maybe it was around this time that he started to realise that he was better off making dance music of his own rather than leeching off someone else.
If you think about it, Let’s Dance was right around the corner, and even if Queen were making the kind of tunes that fit his voice, he was going to have a lot more fun jamming with Rodgers and coming up with tunes like ‘Modern Love’. The ‘Phil Collins years’ for Bowie may not have been far away, but since he was already aligning with the zeitgeist for the first time in years, why not try and lean into it a little bit?
While getting the rock and roll alien on the record would have at least made the whole thing a bit more interesting, it doesn’t actually do enough to save it. The demo of both the band and Bowie singing together is fascinating for about two seconds, but the fact that the song just isn’t quite there yet is proof that the experiment wasn’t quite working.
