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David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes

David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Scary Monsters
Released: 1980

Ashes To Ashes Lyrics

Do you remember a guy that's been
In such an early song?
I've heard a rumor from Ground Control
Oh no, don't say it's true

They got a message from the Action Man
"I'm happy, hope you're happy too
I've loved all I've needed, love
Sordid details following"

The shrieking of nothing is killing, just
Pictures of Jap girls in synthesis and I
Ain't got no money and I ain't got no hair
But I'm hoping to kick but the planet it's glowing

Ashes To Ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heaven's high
Hitting an all-time low

Time and again I tell myself
I'll stay clean tonight
But the little green wheels are following me
Oh no, not again
I'm stuck with a valuable friend
"I'm happy, hope you're happy too"
One flash of light but no smoking pistol

I never done good things (I never done good things)
I never done bad things (I never done bad things)
I never did anything out of the blue, woh-o-oh
Want an axe to break the ice
Wanna come down right now

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heaven's high
Hitting an all-time low

My mother said, to get things done
You'd better not mess with Major Tom

My mother said, to get things done
You'd better not mess with Major Tom

My mother said, to get things done
You'd better not mess with Major Tom

My mother said, to get things done
You'd better not mess with Major Tom

Writer/s: BOWIE, DAVID
Publisher: EMI Music Publishing, TINTORETTO MUSIC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Ashes To Ashes Song Chart

This song can be seen as a sequel to Bowie's 1969 hit, "Space Oddity." It revisits the fictional astronaut, Major Tom, who is now in space. He has regained communication with Ground Control and tells them he is happy, but they deem him nothing but a "junkie, strung out in heavens high, hitting an all-time low." Fans believe this to be Bowie's autobiographical piece about his fight against drug abuse and other personal demons.

The closing refrain of this song, "My mama said to get things done, you'd better not mess with Major Tom," suggests that in order to make the best of the future, one should not dwell on the past. It has also been suggested that "Space Oddity" was a thinly veiled reference to a drug trip, and that "Ashes to Ashes" is hinting that in order to move on, Bowie must kick these drug habits. (thanks, Jason - Watford, England)

In his 2003 interview with Performing Songwriter magazine, Bowie explains that the song "Inchworm," which was sung by Danny Kaye in the 1952 movie Hans Christian Andersen, was a big influence on "Ashes To Ashes." Said Bowie: "I loved it as a kid and it's stayed with me forever. I keep going back to it. You wouldn't believe the amount of my songs that have sort of spun off that one song. Not that you'd really recognize it. Something like 'Ashes to Ashes' wouldn't have happened if it hadn't have been for 'Inchworm.' There's a child's nursery rhyme element in it, and there's something so sad and mournful and poignant about it. It kept bringing me back to the feelings of those pure thoughts of sadness that you have as a child, and how they're so identifiable even when you're an adult. There's a connection that can be made between being a somewhat lost five-year old and feeling a little abandoned and having the same feeling when you're in your twenties. And it was that song that did that for me."

The music video for "Ashes to Ashes" features Bowie dressed as Pierrot in a variety of bizarre situations. Steve Strange of the New Wave band, Visage, cameos. Bowie has said the shot of himself and other characters marching towards the camera in front of a bulldozer symbolizes "oncoming violence." During this scene, the characters behind Bowie are not bowing, but simply trying to pull their gowns away from the bulldozer so they don't get stuck! This, and many other images in the video suggest that Bowie may be trying to bury the various personas he developed.

The video, which Bowie directed with David Mallet, cost £250,000 to produce, making it the most expensive music video ever made at the time. It was released a year before MTV went on the air.

In 1983, Peter Schilling released "Major Tom (I'm Coming Home)," which is based on the Major Tom character. It was a rare instance of someone making a sequel to a song by another artist.

This was sampled on Samantha Mumba's "Body II Body." Bowie gave his seal of approval to Samantha's song, but a lot of his fans hated it. (thanks, Adam - Dewsbury, England)

The British BBC TV series, Ashes to Ashes, was named after this song. The series served as the sequel to Life on Mars, which was also named after the Bowie song of the same name.

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) was ranked at #30 on Q Magazine's "100 Greatest British Albums Ever."

David Bowie - Up the Hill Backwards

David Bowie - Up the Hill Backwards Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Scary Monsters
Released: 1980

Up the Hill Backwards Lyrics

The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom
And the possibilities it seems to offer
It's got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it
It's got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it

A series of shocks - sneakers fall apart
Earth keeps on rolling - witnesses falling
It's got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it
It's got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it

Yeah, yeah, yeah - Up the Hill Backwards
It'll be alright ooo-ooo

While we sleep they go to work
We're legally crippled it's the death of love
It's got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it
It's got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it

More idols then realities
I'm OK, you're so-so

Yeah, yeah, yeah - up the hill backwards
It'll be alright ooo-ooo

Writer/s: BOWIE, DAVID
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, TINTORETTO MUSIC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Up the Hill Backwards Song Chart

The fourth and final single from David Bowie's Scary Monsters album, this features Robert Fripp on lead guitar. The King Crimson axeman recalled to Mojo in 2015: "Bowie had the intelligence to let me get up and fly. On 'Up The Hill Backwards,' his words were referring to Marcel Duchamp, and I interpreted that in my playing."

Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. He first achieved fame not in his native country, but in the US, where his painting Nude Descending a Staircase, exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show in New York was the rage of the exhibition.

A playful man, Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes through subversive actions such as putting everyday items like a bicycle wheel mounted on a kitchen stool on display. Half a century later, this approach would be called conceptual art, though he himself used the term 'ready-mades' for his ideas.

Duchamp ostensibly giving up art in the early twenties, devoting himself to chess, which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.