songs for broken hearts, no. 53

In my previous blog, I exhausted almost everything I have to say about David Bowie. Almost. One Bowie album that’s grown on me quite a bit since I wrote all that turgid prose a few years ago is Space Oddity. It’s an interesting transitional record, featuring the last gasp of Bowie’s largely failed attempt to carve out a place for himself in the world of 60s Mod pop, as well as initial elements of the muscular folk metal that would dominate The Man Who Sold the World, another album I’ve reassessed favorably. Space Oddity also offers a first hint of the glammy thing for which Bowie soon became famous. Tonight’s song, for instance, sounds like an outtake from Ziggy Stardust. A lot of the great Bowie techniques are already used as if they were second nature, especially in the chorus where he harmonizes wildly with himself and shakes some groovy tambourine for added emphasis. What makes Space Oddity compelling to me now is that you can really hear Bowie searching for an identity. And judging by the continual shifting of his persona over the following years, maybe he concluded that stable identity is overrated. You can twist your mind into knots if you think about this shit for too long, but I can’t help myself. So here's some food for thought: If Bowie's self titled first album is where Davy Jones becomes David Bowie, then Space Oddity is where David Bowie becomes David Bowie. It's the point at which he assumes a purposefully deconstructed identity, one that paradoxically becomes one of the very few sources of continuity for him in subsequent years…