“Young Americans” – David Bowie
(Words/music: David Bowie, available on Young Americans, Virgin 1975)

In completely isolated circumstances – never having heard the song before nor knowing that it is a David Bowie song – “Young Americans” requires a slight leap of faith to get into it.  Knowing the song, the opening drum notes are enough to guarantee that I will do nothing but listen to this song for the next five minutes.  However, I understand how the unfamiliar might be put off by the opening; the cascading piano keys and the absurdly prominent honking saxophone makes the song sound like the type of soft-rock fare heard while shopping in a drug store.  Bowie eventually rewards the listener’s patience as slowly all of the different layers come in, starting with the moment the backing vocals enter during the first chorus. Featuring future star Luther Vandross, Bowie’s backing singers push his own vocal performance as he tries to keep up with them.  Slowly, he settles into the song and works himself up into a soulful fervor.  Maybe it’s his background singers pushing him to compete with them, perhaps Bowie gets more worked up as he goes deeper into his cynical look at life in the 70s, or maybe it’s just a superb arrangement with an excellent bridge leading into the final climax.  Regardless, Bowie turns in perhaps his finest vocal performance, especially in the last minute and a half as he sounds like a man possessed, tossing off line after line until his band stops and Bowie puts his cracking falsetto squarely into the spotlight.  Bowie’s vocal performance alone makes this an essential song, but it’s the flawless arrangement that catapults “Young Americans” into the stratosphere.   I even kind of like that damn saxophone even though it’s a little too loud for my taste.

To me, the most interesting line is the borrowed line from the opening of “A Day in the Life” in that final stretch run.  My friend Mike and I discussed it a while back and we agreed that the single line fits only because it’s the perfect length – any more and it would derail the song.  I see a few different reasons for the line (“I heard the news today, oh boy”).  First, it could be a hat tip to John Lennon, who guests on two other songs on Young Americans.  It also fits the thematic content of the song – Bowie fills his song with details of racism, economic depression, and social injustice (among other bummers) and his backing singers offer the line almost like a Greek chorus commenting on the plot.  It’s important that the backing singers and not Bowie get this line as well, letting it work as a bit of call-and-response, as the line triggers Bowie’s most impassioned segment of the song.  It also creates this sort of dialogue between Bowie’s sketch of American life in the 1970s with Lennon’s depiction of youthful boredom in 1960’s England.  Mike summarizes the conversation as “Life in England is full of tedium and repetition… Yeah, well America’s just as bad, it’s just more hedonistic.”  I’m inclined to agree with his interpretation.

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