The latest issue of Rolling Stone features “The Pop 100,” a list of the top 100 pop songs from The Beatles to the Backstreet Boys. Rolling Stone teams up with MTV to bring us this, er….enlightening list…..
David Bowie weighs in with one track, Changes, which is listed as number 38. The blurb reads:
- “Very Neurotic” is how David Bowie described “Changes” in a 1972 interview with ROLLING STONE. “Changes” was the first single for RCA, which had signed him on the merits of his six-track demo for the Hunky Dory album. Bowie wanted “Life on Mars” as the single, but it was “Changes” – with its undertones of English musichall camp and lounge singing – that would ultimately become his anthem.
Mick Rock, who first began his decades-long friendship with Bowie when he interviewed the singer for that 1972 ROLLING STONE feature, says lyrics like “I watched the rippleschange their size” reflected Bowie’s interest in Buddhism. Because it was the song so perfectly described his mutable artistic persona (“I’ve never caught a glimps/Of how the others must see the faker”) that gives its name to Bowie’s 1976 greatest-hits collection.
Rick Wakeman, who played piano on the Hunky Dory sessions, remembers Bowie as precise and professional. He knew the sound he wanted, and he would scold the band for being under-rehearsed. “That piece was very much something he had envisioned from start to finish,” Wakeman says, “which is probably why it was so sucessful. It didn’t need mucking around with.”
In this chart Bowie is ranked above other artists such as N’sync, Goo Goo Dolls, Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton.
Thanks, Bsctrumpet!!