Career overview

Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in the autumn of 1969, when his space-age mini-melodrama "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK singles chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam-rock era as a flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona epitomised a career often marked by musical innovation, reinvention and striking visual presentation.

In 1975 Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the hit album Young Americans, which the singer identified as “plastic soul”. The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees.

He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist and challenging 1977 album Low – the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno. His most experimental works to date, the so-called "Berlin Trilogy" nevertheless produced three UK top-five albums. The anthem-like, towering title track of the second work "Heroes" (1977) is widely regarded as a milestone in rock and pop.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes" and its parent album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). He paired with Queen for the 1981 UK chart-topper "Under Pressure", but consolidated his commercial – and, until then, most profitable – sound in 1983 with the album Let's Dance, which yielded the hit singles "China Girl", "Modern Love" and, most famously, the title track.

Since the mid-80s only a handful of Bowie’s recordings have entered public consciousness. In the British Broadcasting Corporation's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie ranked 29. Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 136 million albums, and ranks among the ten best-selling acts in UK pop history.

Biography

1947 to 1967: Early years

Space Oddity.

David Robert Jones was born in Brixton, London on 8 January, 1947 to a father from Yorkshire and a mother from an Irish-Catholic family. It has been suggested that he may have been born as far away as Doncaster Royal Infirmary. He grew up at the address of 40 Stansfield Road. He lived in Brixton until he was six years old, when his family moved to Bromley in Kent (now part of Greater London). He went to school in Nelson Comprehensive in Bromley and lived with his parents until he was 18.

He was forced to stay out of school for eight months so that doctors could conduct operations in attempts to repair his potentially blinded eye. Bowie's friend George Underwood, while wearing a ring on his finger, had punched him in the eye when the two were fighting over a girl ^{[citation�needed]}. Underwood and Bowie remained good friends; Underwood went on to do artwork for Bowie's earlier albums.album covers David Bowie Album Covers. GeorgeUnderwood.com. Doctors could not fully repair the damage, leaving his pupil permanently dilated. As a result of the injury, Bowie has faulty depth perception. Bowie has stated that although he can see with his injured eye, his colour vision was mostly lost and a brownish tone is constantly present.

At the age of 17, David Jones was interviewed on BBC television's Tonight programme by Cliff Michelmore as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men.

Bowie stated that his earliest musical goal was to be a saxophone player in Little Richard's group. Initially a saxophonist, he was discovered, quite by accident, as a singer when he subbed in for a missing vocalist at a club in London. He played with various blues groups, such as The King Bees, The Mannish Boys and The Lower Third in the 1960s. Bowie adapted his public image to fit, and often anticipate, the prevailing musical trends. His early work shifts through the blues and Elvis-esque music while working with many British pop styles.

Influenced by the dramatic arts he studied at this age — from avant-garde theatre and mime to Commedia dell'arte — much of Bowie's work has involved the creation of characters or personae to present to the world. The aspiring rock star needed to use a different stage name to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, so he chose the last name Bowie after the Alamo hero Jim Bowie and his famous Bowie knife. He pronounces Bowie to rhyme with Joey.

Bowie released his first solo album in 1967 for Deram records, simply called David Bowie, an amalgam of psychedelia and easy listening. Also released was a single, "The Laughing Gnome", with the cult-classic B-side "The Gospel According to Tony Day". None of these managed to chart; the 1967 album is hard to find today, although it exists in counterfeit copies. However, the materials of the album, the single, and several other works were later recycled in a multitude of compilation albums.

During 1967, Bowie also had minor success with a single he wrote for another artist, "Oscar" (an early stage name of actor-musician Paul Nicholas). Bowie wrote Oscar's third single, "Over The Wall We Go", which gained a degree of notoriety because it satirized a series of highly-publicized breakouts from British prisons.

1969 to 1973: Psychedelic folk to glam rock

Bowie's first flirtation with fame came in 1969 with his single "Space Oddity", supposedly released to coincide with the first moon landing, although Bowie himself has claimed that this is untrue. This ballad was the story of what was often called Bowie's first dual-subject and role, Major Tom, an astronaut who becomes lost in space. It became a UK hit record. Its corresponding album was originally titled David Bowie and has caused some confusion, as both of Bowie's first and second albums were released with that name in the UK. In the US the second album bore the title Man of Words, Man of Music. In 1972, the second album was re-released as Space Oddity.

On 19 March 1970, Bowie married Mary Angela Barnett (now known as Angela Bowie) in Kent, England. Later that year, Bowie released The Man Who Sold the World, rejecting the acoustic guitar sound of the previous album and replacing it with the heavy rock backing provided by Mick Ronson, who would be a major collaborator through to 1973. Much of the album resembles British hard rock of the period, but the album provided some interesting musical detours, such as the title track's use of Latin sounds to hold the melody.

The track provided an unlikely hit for UK pop singer Lulu and would be performed by many groups over the years, including Nirvana. The cover of the first release of this album, on which Bowie is seen reclining in a dress, was an early indication of his interest in exploiting his androgynous appearance.

His next record, Hunky Dory (1971) saw the partial return of the fey pop singer of "Space Oddity", with light fare such as the droll "Kooks" (dedicated to his young son known to the world as Zowie Bowie but legally named Duncan Zowie Heywood Jones). Other places, the album included some of his most harrowing lyrics on tracks such as "Oh! You Pretty Things" (this song was also taken to UK #12 by Herman's Hermits' Peter Noone in 1971), the semi-autobiographical "The Bewlay Brothers" and the Buddhist-influenced "Quicksand". Lyrically, the young songwriter also paid unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol," and "Queen Bitch," which Bowie's somewhat cryptic liner notes indicate as a Velvet Underground pastiche.

As with the single "Changes", Hunky Dory was not a big hit but it laid the groundwork for the move that would shortly lift Bowie into the first rank of stars, giving him four top 10 albums and eight top ten singles in the UK in 18 months between 1972 and 1973.

David Bowie as "Halloween Jack" - a character from the "Diamond Dogs" album.

Bowie's androgynous image was taken a step further in June 1972 with the seminal concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, focusing on the career of an extraterrestrial rock singer. The album's sound returns to the hard rock line-up of The Man Who Sold the World, but the feel is lighter and faster, typifying glam rock as pioneered by Marc Bolan. Many of the album's songs became rock classics, including "Ziggy Stardust," "Moonage Daydream," "Hang on to Yourself," and "Suffragette City".

Bowie's Ziggy Stardust character became the basis for his first tour beginning in 1972, where Bowie donned his famous red, flaming hair and wild outfits. The tour featured a three-piece band representing the 'Spiders from Mars': Ronson on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass, and Mick Woodmansey on drums. The album flew to #5 in the UK on the strength of the #10 placing of the single "Starman." The success of the album made Bowie a star, and soon the one-year-old Hunky Dory album eclipsed Ziggy Stardust, when it peaked at #3 on the UK chart. At the same time the non-album single "John, I’m Only Dancing" peaked at UK #12, and "All the Young Dudes", a song he had given to, and produced for, Mott the Hoople, made UK #3.

Around the same time Bowie began promoting and producing his rock and roll heroes. Former Velvet Underground singer Lou Reed's solo breakthrough Transformer was produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson. Iggy Pop and his band The Stooges signed with Bowie's management, MainMan Productions, and recorded their ultimate album, Raw Power, in London. Though he was not present for the tracking of the album, Bowie later performed its much debated mix.

The Spiders From Mars came together again on 1973's Aladdin Sane, another conceptual work about the disintegration of society, and Bowie's first #1 album in the UK. The album is sometimes called Bowie's "On the Road" album, because he wrote all the new songs on ship, bus or trains during the American Ziggy Stardust tour. The album's cover, featuring Bowie shirtless with Ziggy hair and a red, black, and blue lightning bolt across his face, is one of the most famous covers of all time. Aladdin Sane included the UK #2 hit "The Jean Genie", the UK #3 hit "Drive-In Saturday", and a rendition of The Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together". Mike Garson joined Bowie to play piano on this album, and his performance has been called the album's highlight. As of 2005, Garson often plays in Bowie's band.

Bowie's later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane records as well as a few earlier tracks like "Changes" and "The Width of a Circle", were ultra-theatrical affairs, filled with some rather shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson's guitar. Bowie took the character to extremes, touring and giving press conferences as Ziggy before a dramatic and abrupt on-stage "retirement" at London's Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. His famous announcement - "Not only is this the last show of the tour, but it's the last show that we'll ever do" - was preserved as part of a live recording of the show, released as a double album under the title Ziggy Stardust - The Motion Picture.

Pin Ups, a collection of his versions of 1960s hits, was released in 1973, spawning a UK #3 hit in "Sorrow" and itself peaking at #1, making David Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. By that time, the Spiders from Mars were long split, and Bowie was trying to escape from his Ziggy persona. Bowie's own back catalogue was now highly sought. The Man Who Sold the World had been re-released in 1972 along with the second David Bowie album (Space Oddity), whilst Hunky Dory's "Life on Mars?" was released as a single in 1973 and made #3 in the UK, the same year Bowie's record from 1967, "The Laughing Gnome," hit #6.

The androgynous public and stage persona Bowie affected during this period sold records, but its popularity in gay culture and the emerging gay rights movement created controversy both in Britain, where homosexuality had only been legal since 1967, and the United States. Bowie has since retracted and distanced himself from the claim he made in an interview to being bisexual.

1974 to 1976: Soul, R&B, and The Thin White Duke

1974 saw the release of another ambitious album, Diamond Dogs, with a spoken word introduction and segued songs ("Sweet Thing/Candidate"). Diamond Dogs was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell's 1984 to music ("1984", "Big Brother", "We Are the Dead").

Bowie also made plans to develop a Diamond Dogs movie, but didn't get very far. He mentioned later that there was some footage completed with scenes of havoc with people on roller skates, but it has remained unseen. Bowie had planned on actually writing a musical to 1984, but his interest waned after encountering difficulties in licensing the novel, and he used the songs he had written for Diamond Dogs.

The album — and an NBC television special, the 1980 Floor Show, broadcast at around the same time — demonstrated Bowie headed toward the genre of soul/disco music, the track "1984" being a prime example. The album spawned the hits "Rebel Rebel" (UK #5) and "Diamond Dogs" (UK #21), and itself went to #1 in the UK, making him the best-selling act of that country for the second year in a row. In the US, Bowie achieved his first major commercial success when the album went to #5.

To follow on the release of the album, Bowie launched a massive Diamond Dogs tour of North America, lasting from June to December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production broke with contemporary standard practice for rock concerts by featuring no encores. It was filmed by Alan Yentob for the documentary Cracked Actor.

Bowie commented that the resulting live album David Live ought really to be called "David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory," presumably referring to his addled psychological state during this frenetic period. Nevertheless the album solidified his status as a superstar, going #2 in the UK and #8 in the US. It also spawned a UK #10 hit in a cover of "Knock on Wood".

After the opening leg of the tour, Bowie mostly jettisoned the elaborate sets. Then, when the tour resumed after a summer break in Philadelphia for recording new material, the Diamond Dogs sound no longer seemed apt. Bowie cancelled seven dates and made changes to the band, which returned to the road in October as the Philly Dogs tour.

For Ziggy Stardust fans who had not discerned the soul and funk strains already apparent in Bowie's recent work, the "new" sound was considered a sudden and jolting step. 1975's Young Americans was Bowie's definitive exploration of Philly soul — though he himself referred to the sound ironically as 'plastic soul'. It contained his first #1 hit in the US, "Fame," co-written with John Lennon (who also contributed backing vocals) and one of Bowie's new band members, guitarist Carlos Alomar. It was based on a riff Alomar developed when covering The Flares's 1961 doo-wop classic "Footstompin'," which Bowie's band had taken to playing live during the Philly Dogs period. One of the backing vocalists on the album is a young Luther Vandross. Despite Bowie's unashamed recognition of the shallowness of his 'plastic soul,' he did earn the bona fide of being one of the few white artists to be invited to appear on the popular Soul Train.

Young Americans was the album which cemented Bowie's stardom in the US; though only peaking there at #9, as opposed to the #5 placing of Diamond Dogs, the album stayed in the charts for almost twice as long. At the same time the album went #1 in the UK, and a re-issue of his old single "Space Oddity" became his first #1 hit in the UK, only a few months after "Fame" had done the same in the US.

1976's Station to Station featured a starker version of this soul persona, called The Thin White Duke. Visually the figure was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the character Bowie portrayed in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Station to Station presented a new direction in Bowie's music, with innovative use of synthesizer and electronic sounds and a lean towards German pop music. By this time Bowie was heavily dependent on drugs, especially cocaine, and many critics have attributed the chopped rhythms and emotional detachment of the record to the influence of the drug, which Bowie claimed to have been introduced to in America.

Nonetheless, there was another large tour in 1976, the Station to Station World Tour, which featured a starkly lit set and highlighted new songs such as the dramatic, lengthy title track, the romantic ballad "Word on a Wing," and the funky "TVC 15" and "Stay." The core band that coalesced around this album and tour — rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis — would remain a stable unit through 1980.

With the album at #3 in the US, his greatest success there ever, and the single "Golden Years" becoming a transatlantic Top Ten hit, Bowie was at a commercial peak, yet his sanity — by his own admission later — was twisted by cocaine and he overdosed several times during the year.

At around this time, Bowie became embroiled in a controversy caused by his comments to Playboy magazine apparently praising Hitler, and his statement that "Britain is ready for a fascist leader." He later pointed out that being "ready" for one and "needing" one are two different things. In a September 1976 Playboy interview, Bowie referred to Hitler as "one of the first rock stars" and expressed admiration of Hitler's stage presence, comparing him favourably to Mick Jagger.

Bowie may have intended to refer specifically and narrowly to Hitler's ability to mesmerize a crowd, and not to his Aryan-supremacist views or the genocidal results. However, Bowie's statements were accompanied by some theatrics involving an open-top vintage Mercedes and what some claimed was a Nazi salute staged outside Victoria Station.

Bowie would later angrily deny being so "foolish" as to raise a Nazi salute, claiming that the photographer had caught him in mid-wave. This incident, along with similarly controversial racist remarks by Eric Clapton around the same time, were catalysts for the formation of the Rock Against Racism movement. Later, Bowie retracted his 'fascist' comments, excusing himself by claiming his judgement had been affected by substance abuse.

1976 to 1980: The Berlin era

Bowie's interest in the growing German music scene, as well as his drug addiction, prompted him to move to Berlin to dry out and rejuvenate his career. Sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with his friend Iggy Pop, he co-produced three more of his own classic albums with Tony Visconti, as well as aiding Pop in his career. With Bowie as a co-writer and musician, Pop completed his first two solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life.

More unusually, Bowie joined Pop's touring band in the spring, simply playing keyboard and singing backing vocals. The group performed in the UK, Europe, and the US from March to April.

David Bowie, Best of 1974/1979

The brittle sound of Station to Station proved a precursor to that found on Low, the first of three recorded where Brian Eno was integral to the making of the albums, but despite wide-spread belief, he was not the producer. Journalists who do not read the album covers often credit Eno with production of the trilogy but in fact Bowie and Tony Visconti co-produced, with Eno co-writing some of the music, playing keyboards and developing strategies. Bowie stressed in 2000 "Over the years not enough credit has gone to Tony Visconti on those particular albums. The actual sound and texture, the feel of everything from the drums to the way that my voice is recorded is Tony Visconti."

Visconti said at the time that "Bowie wanted to make an album of music that was uncompromising and reflected the way he felt. He said did not care whether or not he had another hit record, and that the recording would be so out of the ordinary that it might never get released."

Heavily influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu and the minimalist work of Steve Reich, Bowie journeyed to Neunkirchen to meet the famed German producer Conny Plank. Conrad Plank was considered the revolutionary producer of that era for German rock, but had no interest in working with Bowie, refusing him entry into the studio. Bowie and his team persevered, however, and recorded on their own new songs that were relatively simple, repetitive and stripped, a clear and perverse reaction to punk rock, with the second side almost wholly instrumental. (By way of tribute, proto-punk Nick Lowe recorded an EP entitled "Bowi".) The album provided him with a surprise #3 hit in the UK when the BBC picked up the first single, "Sound and Vision", as its 'coming attractions' theme music. Low was renowned for having been far ahead of its time, many calling it Bowie's best album.^{[citation�needed]}Bowie himself has said "cut me and I bleed Low". It was produced in 1976 and released in early 1977.

The Low sessions also formalised Bowie's three phase approach to making albums that he still favours today. Much of the band were present for the first five days only, after which Eno, Alomar and Gardiner remained to play overdubs. By the time Bowie wrote and recorded the lyrics everybody but Visconti and studio engineers had departed.

The next record, "Heroes", was similar in sound to Low, though slightly more accessible. The mood of these records fit the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolized by the divided city that provided its inspiration. The title track remains one of Bowie's best known, a classic story about two lovers who met at the Berlin Wall.

Also in 1977, Bowie appeared on the ITV music show Marc, hosted by his friend and fellow glam pioneer Marc Bolan of T. Rex, with whom he had regularly socialised and jammed since before either became famous. He turned out to be the show's final guest, as Bolan was killed in a car crash shortly afterwards. Bowie was one of many superstars who attended the funeral.

For Christmas 1977, Bowie joined Bing Crosby, of whom he was an ardent admirer, in a recording studio to do a version of Little Drummer Boy, with new lyrics added. The two had originally met on Crosby's Christmas television special two years earlier (on the recommendation of his children — Crosby had not heard of Bowie) and performed the song. One month after the record was completed, Crosby died. Five years later, the song would prove a worldwide festive hit, charting in the U.K at #3 on Christmas day 1982. Bowie later remarked jokingly that he was afraid of being a guest artist, because "everyone I met dropped dead a month later", referring to Bolan and Crosby.

There was an extensive world tour in 1978 which featured the music of both Low and "Heroes". A live album of this tour was released, known as Stage. Songs from both Low and "Heroes" were later converted to symphonies by minimalist composer Phillip Glass. 1978 was also the year that featured Bowie narrating Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, which to this day is regarded as one of the best recordings of the work.

Lodger (1979) was the final album in Bowie's so-called "Berlin Trilogy" or 'triptych' as Tony Visconti says Bowie called it. It featured the singles "Boys Keep Swinging", "DJ" and "Look Back in Anger" and, unlike the two previous long-players, did not contain any instrumentals. However, the album is renowned for being quite a contorted mix of New Wave and world music, and pieces such as "African Night Flight" and "Yassassin" were surprising detours even by Bowie's standards. However, it contained tracks that were composed using the non-traditional Bowie/Eno composition techniques. "Boys Keep Swinging" was developed with the band members swapping their instruments with each other and "Move On" contains the chords for an early Bowie composition "All The Young Dudes", however they are played backwards. This was Bowie's last album with Eno until 1995's Outside.

In 1980, Bowie did an about-face, integrating the lessons learnt on Low, Heroes, and Lodger while expanding upon them with chart success. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) included the #1 hit "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural work of guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer, and revisiting the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity". The imagery Bowie used in the song's music video gave international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement and, with many of the followers of this phase being devotees, Bowie visited the London club "Blitz"—the main New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the regulars (including Steve Strange of the band Visage) to act in the video, renowned as being one of the most innovative of all time.

While Scary Monsters utilised principles that Bowie had learned in the Berlin era, it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically, possibly reflecting the brutal transformation Bowie had gone through during the experience. Bowie had divorced his wife Angie, undergone withdrawal from the drugs of the "Thin White Duke" era, and his conception of how music should be written had totally changed. The album had a hard rock edge with many innovations, including conspicuous guitar contributions from King Crimson's Robert Fripp and The Who's Pete Townshend. Perhaps in an appropriate creative high point, as "Ashes to Ashes" hit #1 on the UK charts, Bowie opened a 3-month run on Broadway starring as The Elephant Man on September 23rd, 1980.Rock Movers & Shakers, Dafydd Rees and Luke Crampton, 1991 Billboard Books.
References:

The 1980s: Bowie the superstar

In 1981, Queen released "Under Pressure", co-written by and performed with Bowie. The song was a hit and became Bowie's 3rd and Queen's 8th #1 single. In the same year Bowie made a cameo appearance in the German movie Christiane F, wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, the real-life story of a 13 year-old girl in Berlin who becomes addicted to heroin and ends up prostituting herself. Bowie is credited with "special cooperation" in the credits and his music features prominently in the movie. The soundtrack was released in 1982 and contained a version of "Heroes" sung partially in German.

Bowie then scored his first truly commercial blockbuster with Let's Dance in 1983, a slick dance album co-produced by CHIC's Nile Rodgers. It was a departure from Scary Monsters for which Bowie received a bit of inside criticism; rather than revolting against 1980s dance music, he had in fact joined the scene. The title track went to #1 in the United States and United Kingdom and many now consider it a standard.

The album also featured the singles Cat People, "Modern Love" and "China Girl" , the latter causing something of a stir due to its suggestive promotional video. "China Girl" was a remake of a song which Bowie co-wrote several years earlier with Iggy Pop, who recorded it for The Idiot. In an interview by Kurt Loder, Bowie revealed that the motivation for recording China Girl was to help out his friend Iggy Pop financially, contributing to Bowie's history of support for musicians he admired. Let's Dance was also notable as a stepping stone for the career of the late Texan guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on the album and was to have supported Bowie on the consequent Serious Moonlight Tour. Vaughan, however, never joined the tour after a pay dispute between Bowie and Vaughan's manager at the time. Vaughan was replaced by Earl Slick. The Simms Brothers Band toured and performed with Bowie at this time. The tour was a huge success, and a single performance at the Cal Jam Music festival actually scored Bowie a million dollars on its own.

The 1984 follow-up album Tonight was also dance-oriented, featuring collaborations with Tina Turner and a cover of The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows". Critics labelled it a lazy effort, dashed off by Bowie simply to recapture Let's Dance's chart success. Yet the album bore the transatlantic Top Ten hit "Blue Jean" whose complete video, a 22-minute short film directed by Julien Temple, reflected Bowie's long-standing interest in combining music with drama. It also featured the minor hit "Loving the Alien". The album also has a pair of dance version rewrites of "Neighborhood Threat" and "Tonight", old songs Bowie wrote with Iggy Pop which had originally appeared on Lust for Life.

In 1985, Bowie performed several of his greatest hits at Wembley for Live Aid. At the end of his set, which comprised "Rebel Rebel", "TVC 15", "Modern Love" and "'Heroes'", he introduced a film of the Ethiopian famine, for which the event was raising funds, which was set to the song "Drive" by the Cars. At the event, the video to a fundraising single was premièred – Bowie performing a duet with Mick Jagger on a version of "Dancing in the Street", which quickly went to #1 on release.

Also, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group on the song "This Is Not America", which was featured in the film The Falcon and the Snowman. This song was the centrepiece of the album, a collaboration intended to underline the espionage thriller's central themes of alienation and disaffection.

In 1986 Bowie contributed the theme song to the film Absolute Beginners. The movie was not well reviewed but Bowie maintained for many years that the song, a UK #2 hit, was one of the best and most professional he'd ever written. He also took a role in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth as Jareth, the Goblin King, who steals the baby brother of a girl named Sarah (played by Jennifer Connelly), in order to turn him into a goblin. Bowie wrote songs for the film, some of which became singles.

Bowie's