Style and Themes
The public's first taste of Scary Monsters was "Ashes to Ashes", which was released as a single one month prior to the album and made #1 in the UK. Built around a guitar synth theme by Chuck Hammer, it revisited the character of Major Tom from Bowie's early hit "Space Oddity". Aside from its critical and commercial success as a song, the accompanying music video set a benchmark for the art form.
Notwithstanding the lush textures of "Ashes to Ashes", Bowie's sound on the album was described by critics as being harsher—and his worldview more desperate—than anything he had released since Diamond Dogs (1974). This was exemplified by such tracks as "It's No Game (No. 1)", the hard-rocking opener featuring lead female vocals in Japanese; the careering title track with its prominent percussion effects and Bowie's mock-cockney accent; the second single "Fashion", which seemed to draw parallels between style and politics and which had its own highly-regarded video; and "Scream Like a Baby", a tale of political imprisonment.
Aside from "Ashes to Ashes", "Teenage Wildlife" was perhaps the album's most personal lyric. Against a musical backdrop that owed much to his song "Heroes", Bowie appeared to take aim squarely at New Wave artists, particularly Gary Numan:
- A broken-nosed mogul are you
- One of the new wave boys
- Same old thing in brand new drag
- Comes sweeping into view
- As ugly as a teenage millionaire
- Pretending it's a whiz-kid world
Read more about this topic: Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Famous quotes containing the words style and, style and/or themes:
“I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)