What does David Bowie’s ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ really mean?
In the music video for ‘Blackstar’, one of the last songs that David Bowie released before passing away, there is a shot of a deceased astronaut sprawled along the ground, and a starry sky is reflected in his closed visor. Many David Bowie fans have speculated that this is likely Major Tom, one of Bowie’s many characters but also the one he most closely associated himself with. He’s also the character to whom Bowie never formally said goodbye.
It’s probably true that the astronaut is Major Tom, given how self-aware Bowie seemed when writing Blackstar and how the whole album was a moment for him to stare down death. However, the point that his intention is still under speculation shows how much of an enigma he was as an artist.
Nobody has ever come close to embracing concepts and experimentation as effectively as David Bowie did. With each album came a new look, a new sound, one that seemed to expand upon what he had done previously and add another layer to his artistry. Fans were constantly left guessing about the meaning behind some of his characters and songs, and his intention behind many songs is still up in the air.
When we think of David Bowie as a songwriter, we see that he was so creative that we often don’t accept standard explanations for the reasoning behind his songs. However, while he was ethereal, an astronaut and a Starman, he was also human, someone who felt human emotions and wanted to write about them as we all do. This led him to the track ‘Lady Grinning Soul’, a song that people have debated the meaning behind but is actually the product of Bowies nostalgic, longing, human side.
“Mike Garson’s piano opens with the most ridiculous and spot-on re-creation of a 19th Century music hall ‘exotic’ number,” said Bowie when discussing the song, remaining elusive about its meaning, “I can see now the ‘poses plastiques’ as if through a smoke-filled bar. Fans, castanets and lots of Spanish black lace and little else. Sexy, mmm? And for you, Madam?”
But what does it all mean?
Bowie never really wanted to be black and white about the meaning behind his songs. Where is the fun in that? During that same interview, though, when he was asked who the muse for ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ was, he gave away enough information that people thought they could work out who inspired him.
Bowie said it “was written for a wonderful young girl whom I’ve not seen for more than 30 years,” he continued, “When I hear this song, she’s still in her 20s, of course.”
Many people have since taken this description to mean the soul singer Claudia Lennear. She and Bowie had history, and it’s not like this would be the first time she would find herself a rock star’s muse, as she was allegedly the inspiration behind the Rolling Stones’ less poetically named song, ‘Brown Sugar’.
While we will never truly know who or what ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ means, it is reasonable to assume the track was written about Lennear. The pianist Bowie mentioned, Mike Garson, said in an interview that it was “About as romantic as it gets,” and Lennear herself revealed in an interview that she and Bowie spoke in 2014, and he said he had written the song for her.
