"Teenage Wildlife" is a song written by David Bowie in 1980 for the album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). Running at almost seven minutes, the song was the longest track on Scary Monsters, and Bowie's longest composition since "Station to Station" four years prior in 1976.
The song's original title was "It Happens Everyday." Product Tony Visconti said "Instead of singing 'Not another teenage wildlife' would sing 'It happens everyda-a-ay.'"
Against a musical backdrop that owed much to his classic song "Heroes", including textural guitar work from both Robert Fripp and Chuck Hammer, Bowie appeared to take aim squarely at his post-punk artistic godchildren, 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
In a 1980 interview, Bowie commented on Numan and his "whiz-kid world"—
What Numan did he did excellently but in repetition, in the same information coming over again and again, once you've heard one piece.... It's that false idea of hi-tech society and all that which is... doesn't exist. I don't think we're anywhere near that sort of society. It's a enormous myth that's been perpetuated unfortunately, I guess, by readings of what I've done in that rock area at least, and in the consumer area television has an awful lot to answer for with its fabrication of the computer-world myth.In a recent article for the Mail On Sunday, Bowie revealed that his vocal performance on this song was an imitation of American girl group singer, Ronnie Spector.
The song was covered by Northern Irish rock band Ash for their compilation album A-Z Vol.2.
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