Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

[Spearmint Rhino]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

That poem is shit.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

It's not Eliot or Larkin but it made me giggle, which during the average day is not a bad thing on the whole.

[Benjm]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

Amor de Cosmos wrote:

It's not Eliot...

'Bowie the jew crosses the Tiergarten.
Ecce! Ecce! ón gép.'

...or Larkin...

'Wanking soundlessly before dawn,
David ignores ever present death.'

[Lucia Lanigan]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

There's a little of both styles in:

'Time - he flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor'

[Benjm]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

Lucia Lanigan wrote:

There's a little of both styles in:

'Time - he flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor'

Ha! As ever, Bowie gets there first.

[Bored Of Education]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

That is a shit lyric

[Amor de Cosmos]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

It's not Dylan or Cohen but it's memorable, which, for a pop song, is not a bad thing on the whole.

[Bored Of Education]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

A lot of shit stuff is memorable. That is as shit as "turn and face the strange" is great.

[MsD]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

Add Bowie to the list of "artists you don't get" if you think Time has shit lyrics ...

I look at my watch, it says 9.25 and I think Oh God, I'm still alive ...

We all love that song, in my circle.

[Guest]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

if msd dint have bored to argu with her life wood have
NO
meaning

[MsD]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

Yes, it would be one long drag of fulfilling work and study, international travel and glamorous parties.

I'm far from the only one diasgreeing with him, even on this thread, don't tell me you have a "thing" for me as well. Oh well. It happens a lot.

[MsD]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

I have to go out but I really think Time is a perfect song, I love the phrase "flexies like a whore" and the whole thing encapsulates something .. Seedy, beautiful and decadent. He evokes so much that wouldn't work with a straight lyric any more than Eliot would. I love both, incidentally, but Bowie is/was in the business of writing dazzling, evocative pop songs. Job done.

[Edie St Pierre]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

Yeah, I love 'Time' too, "the snip-ah in the brain", but to be fair if you don't know the song those lyrics do look rubbish, but I can't think of a single pop lyric that would stand up or make sense as just words, in the way that any poem would, even something as apparently rambling and off-the-cuff like say an ee cummings poem has a unified set of ideas and cohesive flow that no pop lyric has or is supposed to have.

I mean when I was 15 or so a relative bought me a book of the complete lyrics of Bob Dylan from the 60's up to the 80's. I didn't know any of the songs then, and as words on a page they had some brilliant images in them, but they made absolutely no sense whatsoever. And that's as it should be. Pop lyrics aren't supposed to be read are they, you're supposed to listen to them. And they're about making you feel something new rather than you making you think something new.

And that stuff doesn't just come from the words but the way the singer sings them, the changes in mood and all that, sometimes they're just about blowing holes in your brain aren't they. Well, you know, the good stuff is anyway.

[Mitch]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

I couldn't agree more Mat. The liner notes for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan say how Dylan claimed that every line in A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall was written as the opening line in another song, and he just stuck them all in together.

It's obviously not literally true, but the greatness of the song's lyric is that it looks like it should be true. I think that's Dylan's genius rather then being able to provide a "unified set of ideas and cohesive flow".

[MsD]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

Exactement.

It's only a shit lyric if it doesn't work, or is so clunkingly bad it dominates and ruins the song. Bowie's generally either wash over you as sounds, or stick as brilliant images.

[Bored Of Education]

Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

Yeah, I love 'Time' too, "the snip-ah in the brain", but to be fair if you don't know the song those lyrics do look rubbish

I know the song very very well, like a lot of Bowie stuff. Unlike a lot of his stuff, however, I find the lyrics and that particular couple of lines terrible and that he is trying too hard there. It's no big deal, just a song I avoid. Bizarrely, I love "Looking like you're Che Guevara" as it is pretty bad but in a Bolan rubbish lyric sort of way