This song isn’t just a track — it’s a lyrical Rorschach test wrapped in eyeliner and piano chords, and it dares you to try and understand it before giving up and ascending into a sequin-covered void.
Let’s begin with the opening line:
“It’s a god-awful small affair / To the girl with the mousy hair.”
Right. We’re in. We’re doing poetry now. Somewhere between a kitchen sink drama and an acid trip written by someone who just learned what metaphors are. She goes to the cinema, her dad’s a prick, and then — somewhere between stanza and synth swell — we’re talking about fighting in the dancehall and Mickey Mouse growing up a cow.
Honestly, it’s like reading a diary that went to art school.
Musically, it’s lush and staggering. The piano swoons like a drunk genius, and the orchestration builds to a climax that feels like you’re being sucked into a glam vortex where everything is dramatic and everyone is smoking.
And Bowie? Bowie is flawless, of course. He could sing IKEA instructions and you’d cry. But here he sounds like he’s narrating a collapsing universe while posing in a mirror — every syllable delivered like it might spontaneously combust.
But let’s not pretend it makes sense.
“Rule Britannia is out of bounds / To my mother, my dog, and clowns.”
Okay. Sure. Sounds like a line someone mumbled into a toilet brush after passing out in a pub bathroom.
And yet… it works. Because Bowie isn’t saying anything. He’s inviting you to feel everything. It’s not a song, it’s a swirling galaxy of glamorously vague emotional trauma. And we bought it — all of it.
“It’s like getting slapped by a poet in a silver jumpsuit — confusing, emotional, oddly arousing.”
So, is there life on Mars? Doesn’t matter. Bowie made Earth weird enough.
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