Never Let Me Down - Song Development

Song Development

The album's lead track, "Day-In Day-Out", was written because Bowie had picked up on what was happening in America through the media about the treatment of the homeless, and he wanted to make a statement about it. The song's video was banned on some networks, which Bowie found "ludicrous". This track was also the lead single for the album.

"Time Will Crawl", which Bowie named as his favorite track from the album, was inspired by events from the Chernobyl disaster, and the idea that it could be someone from your own neighborhood who might be responsible for the end of the world. Bowie said his vocals on this song "owed a lot to Neil Young", stating that "there's a whole lot of recognition of people that have influenced me" on the album. This track was the second single released from the album.

The title track, "Never Let Me Down", is about Bowie's long-time personal assistant, Coco Schwab. Bowie wrote the song as a direct reference to his relationship with Coco as a counterpoint to the rest of the songs on the album, which he felt were mostly allegorical. Bowie attributed the "quality of his vocals" on this track to John Lennon. This track was re-recorded and released as the third single released from the album.

The song "Zeroes", which Rolling Stone magazine called the most heartening and successful track on the album is, according to Bowie, a nostalgia trip. "I wanted to put in every 60s cliche I could think of! 'Stopping and preaching and letting love in,' all those things. I hope there's a humorous undertone to it. But the subtext is definitely that the trappings of rock are not what they're made out to be."

The track "Glass Spider" is a kind of mythological story based on a documentary Bowie had seen about black widow spiders, which said that the spiders lay the skeletons of their prey out on their webs. Bowie "fantasized from that, made the web more of a housing estate." Bowie also thought that the Glass Spider's web would make a good enclosure for the tour, thus giving the supporting tour its name and stage dressing.

Actor Mickey Rourke asked Bowie to be involved in one of the songs, the two having met in London where Rourke was based while filming the movie A Prayer for the Dying. Bowie had him perform the mid-song rap to the song "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)." Bowie jokingly referred to Rourke's performance as "method rapping". Bowie rejected that notion that his "high, little" voice that he sang the song with was a new character (to follow behind Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke), instead saying it's just what the song "needed," as he'd tried the song in his regular voice and didn't like the outcome. "That never bothered me, changing voices to suit a song. You can fool about with it." Bowie considered the voice he sang the song in "a bit Smokey Robinson."

When asked about his choice of including Iggy Pop's song "Bang Bang" on the album (instead of perhaps co-writing a new song), Bowie stated "Iggy's done so many good songs that people never get to hear ... I think it's one of his best songs, "Bang Bang," and it hasn't been heard, and now it might be."

Overall, Bowie summed up the album after it was released in 1987 as an effort to "reestablish what I used to do, which was a guitar-oriented album. I think the next album will be even more so." His follow-up effort was to be the guitar-oriented rock-band album Tin Machine.