David Bowie - Hunky Dory

The opening piano riff descends through the chord sequence and locks in immediately, and Bowie's vocal moves from conversational verses to the held notes on "strange fascination" that became the song's signature. The lyric about turning to face the strange and the compulsive nature of artistic reinvention sets the album's thesis in the first verse, and the song never loses that clarity. Wakeman's piano and Ronson's arrangement support the melody without overwhelming it. The track establishes the warmer, more accessible sound that separates this album from its predecessor, and the production captures the piano tone with room to breathe. A statement of purpose that delivers on the promise.

Written first for the album and recorded by Peter Noone three months before Bowie's version, the song disguises its Nietzschean Übermensch doctrine and Aleister Crowley occultism in a bouncing piano line that recalls the Beatles' Martha My Dear. Bowie sings the verses with an unadorned, almost stark delivery that makes the "homo superior" and "gotta make way for the homo superior" lines land unsettling rather than didactic. The contrast between the bright music and the darker philosophical warnings creates tension that holds across three minutes. The piano style would become a template for British art pop in the seventies, and the vocal performance shows Bowie fully in control of his instrument.

A two-minute breather built on gentle, sporadic piano and Ronson's country-influenced guitar. The eight-line lyric describes a room with a knocked-over mobile and a cactus in the window, and Bowie's metaphor about the city as a wart on the prairie works better than it should. The track is easy to overlook between the stronger songs on either side, but it serves the sequencing by lowering the temperature before Life on Mars? arrives.

Recorded in one take and built on a string arrangement that Ronson wrote as his first attempt at orchestration, the song is a parody of Frank Sinatra's My Way that uses the same chord sequence for its opening. The title references the space race media frenzy rather than the Ziggy Stardust character that would arrive six months later. Bowie's vocal moves from near-nasal verses to a passionately delivered chorus, and the "girl with the mousy hair" who escapes to the movies provides the human anchor for the cinematic sweep. The production captures the one-take vocal with clarity, and Ronson's strings avoid the bombast that would sink similar attempts. A centerpiece that justifies the album's ambition and one of Bowie's two or three best songs from the early seventies.

Written days after his son Duncan was born in May 1971 and dedicated "For Small Z" in the liner notes, the song is noticeably lighter than the tracks around it. Ronson's string arrangement and Bolder's trumpet give it a playful feel, and the lyric about inviting his son to "stay in our lovers' story" hints at the album's broader theme of fictionalizing life. The song is slight compared to the surrounding material but works as a palate cleanser, and its inclusion ensured the album's appeal beyond listeners interested in occult philosophy and Nietzschean supermen.

Five minutes of layered acoustic guitars stacked atop one another at Ken Scott's insistence, with Bowie's vocal navigating references to Aleister Crowley's Golden Dawn, Winston Churchill, Heinrich Himmler and Nietzsche's supermen. The song was inspired by Bowie's February 1971 American tour and written, according to Doggett, about a lack of inspiration and as a means of accessing it. The track evokes Buddhist teachings and spiritualism through mentions of bardo, and Bowie described it in the mid-seventies as a mixture of narrative and surrealism that prefigured the sound of Low. The acoustic guitar layers create a hypnotic effect that carries the dense lyrical content, and the song closes side one at the album's longest running time. A peak that rewards attention.

A Biff Rose and Paul Williams cover that replaced Bombers as the side two opener late in the album's development, and Bowie's first recorded cover in six years. The arrangement is bouncy and up-tempo, with Bowie's saxophone break, Ronson's strings and Wakeman's piano solo providing the highlights. The track is practically identical to Rose's original version but less swung, and it serves as a counterpoint to the angst of Quicksand and the warnings of Changes. Filler that works because it knows its role.

A tribute to the American artist who had inspired Bowie since the mid-sixties, built on an acoustic guitar riff that heavily resembles Ron Davies' Silent Song Through the Land. Originally written for Dana Gillespie, the song emphasizes Warhol's belief that life and art blur together, and Ken Scott's opening announcement of the take number adds a layer of self-awareness. The track works as a character sketch, and the production captures the two acoustic guitars with enough detail to make the riff interesting across four minutes. When Bowie met Warhol in September 1971 and played him the song, Warhol hated it and left the room. A solid tribute that doesn't match the side one material but holds its own.

A tribute that addresses Dylan by his real name Robert Zimmerman and demands he return to his roots to rescue the unfaithful, the song is a parody of Dylan's 1962 Song to Woody and features Dylanesque chord changes. The chorus derives from two Velvet Underground song titles, Here She Comes Now and There She Goes Again, but the pastiche never coheres into a strong melody or a convincing argument. Buckley calls it probably the weakest track on the album, and the assessment is fair. Originally written for George Underwood, the song reads as Bowie working through his relationship with a hero rather than as a finished piece of songwriting. Skip it.

The Velvet Underground tribute and specifically a nod to Lou Reed, driven by guitar rather than piano and characterized as glam rock and proto-punk. The handwritten sleeve notes read "some V.U. White Light returned with thanks," and the song filters Marc Bolan's archness and Lindsay Kemp's dancer aesthetic through Reed's streetwise attitude. The chorus about mincing "satin and tat" and the phrase "bipperty-bopperty hat" sound raunchy rather than camp, and the track foreshadows the glam rock direction Bowie would take on Ziggy Stardust. A preview of the next album and a strong closer to the tribute block.

A late addition and the only track not demoed, featuring sinister sound effects and Bowie's vocal accompanied by Ronson's acoustic guitar. The instrumentation echoes The Man Who Sold the World, and the obscure lyrics have caused decades of confusion. Pegg calls it probably the most cryptic, mysterious and downright frightening Bowie recording in existence, and Buckley considers it one of his most disquieting moments on tape. Many reviewers heard homoerotic undertones; Bowie confirmed in 1977 it was about his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry Burns, though Buckley questions whether that account is real or fictionalized. The lyrics reference other Hunky Dory tracks including Song for Bob Dylan, Oh! You Pretty Things and Changes, and Bowie uses the word "chameleon" that became his most common descriptor. A five-minute closer that either unlocks the album's deeper themes or indulges Bowie's most opaque tendencies, and the verdict depends on how much patience you bring to repeated listens.