Bowie Bits On Latest Album Releases

What you need you have to borrow...

A Bowie link unites the new and recent releases above, albeit rather tenuous in some instances. Here follows those links anyway, in no particular order...apart from left to right...

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The Dandy Warhols have never made a secret of their love for all things Bowie, and there's not the room here to mention all of the Bowie links to the band. However, the new album, Welcome To The Monkey House, had more of a Bowie influence on it than usual, according to lead guitarist Peter Holmstrom:

"Bowie has always been a big influence, He's always there, along with other people. When we first started making this album we were approaching it as if it was a Bowie collection. We'd say 'That song sounds like that Bowie song', 'This is Scary Monsters'."

Helping add a bit of that flavour was long term Bowie fan, Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes who produced the album. The song I Am A Scientist has a Courtney Taylor-Taylor & David Bowie writing credit, no doubt due to the use of a sample from Fashion used on the track.

Tony Visconti plays bass on a couple of tracks and he also sings backing vocals on the one track that he produced, Hit Rock Bottom. To be honest, the track is more T Rex than David Bowie, but I guess if anyone's qualified to give a track a T Rex taste, it's TV.

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Novelty song singer Liam Lynch, the chap who brought us United States Of Whatever, has an affectionate Bowie spoof on his Fake Songs CD, entitled, surprisingly enough, Fake David Bowie Song. Though it has to be said it sounds more like a Suede song sung by Bowie impersonator John Mainwaring... No offence meant to anybody here, just an observation.

Liam has also covered songs by Björk, Pixies, Depeche Mode and Talking Heads on the album, but has made it clear that his heart is in the right place: "I'm not making fun of those artists, because I love them, I just wanted to feel what it was like to do what they do. The truth is, there are so many different artists that do parodies of other artists but never admit it." OK Liam, we believe you... kind of.

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The song On The Way To The Club from Think Tank, Blur's seventy five per cent brilliant new album, hints at a Bowie lyric with this: My eyes aren't blue, there's nothing I can do. I told you these were tenuous, but legal action has been launched for less before now. Speaking of which, you may remember the Blur song M.O.R., which was apparently considered indebted enough to Boys Keep Swinging to earn a Blur/Bowie/Eno credit. (12/20/00 NEWS: BOWIE'S INFLUENCE BECOMES A BIT OF A BLUR)

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Finally, on her latest album, American Life, Madonna has sampled a teeny bit of the intro of Beauty And The Beast. At least I'm ninety nine per cent certain that that's what that noise is about thirty seconds into the rather good I'm So Stupid, a song that is surely a future hit for London's latest adopted superstar. What say you David?