Changes (David Bowie song)
"Changes" is a song by the English singer-songwriter David Bowie from his 1971 album Hunky Dory. RCA Records then released it as a single from the album on 7 January 1972. Written following his promotional tour of America in early 1971, "Changes" was recorded at Trident Studios in London between June and July that year. Co-produced by Bowie and Ken Scott, it featured Rick Wakeman on piano and the musicians who would later become known as the Spiders from Mars—Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey.
At this point in his career, Bowie had experimented with numerous musical styles, all of which failed to earn him stardom. The lyrics of "Changes" reflect this, with the first verse focusing on the compulsive nature of artistic reinvention and distancing oneself from the rock mainstream. The second verse concerns clashes between children and their parents, urging them to allow their children to be themselves as teenagers, a topic Bowie had spoken out about before. Musically, "Changes" is an art pop song that features a distinctive piano riff. The song flopped as a single, later garnering success following the release of Ziggy Stardust. RCA later chose it as a B-side for the reissue of "Space Oddity" in 1975, which became Bowie's first UK number-one single.
"Changes" is regarded as one of Bowie's best songs, with many praising Bowie's vocal performance and Wakeman's piano playing. It has also appeared on several best-of lists. His biographers have viewed the track as a manifesto of his entire career, predicting a constant change of musical styles. Bowie performed "Changes" frequently during his concert tours; it was the final song he performed on stage before his death in 2016. The song has appeared on numerous compilation albums and is the namesake of several. Several artists have covered the song, including Australian singer Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 film Shrek 2, whose version featured new vocals from Bowie.
Writing and recording[edit]
After completing a promotional tour of America in early 1971, David Bowie returned to his home at Haddon Hall in Beckenham, London, and began writing songs. In total, he composed over three-dozen songs there, many of which would appear on his next album Hunky Dory and its follow-up The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.[1][2] One of these tracks was "Changes", which he demoed between May and June 1971. Featuring Bowie on piano, the demo contained different lyrics from the final recording and remains unreleased.[3][4][5]
Work on Hunky Dory officially began at Trident Studios in London on 8 June 1971 and concluded on 6 August.[6] "Changes" was recorded sometime between June and July.[3][4][5] Co-produced by Bowie and Ken Scott, he recorded it with pianist Rick Wakeman and the musicians who would later become known as the Spiders from Mars: guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder and drummer Mick Woodmansey.[7][8] Wakeman, a noted session musician and member of the Strawbs,[9] was asked to play during the Hunky Dory sessions and accepted.[10] He had previously played Mellotron on Bowie's 1969 self-titled album.[11] He recalled in 1995 that he met with Bowie in late June 1971 at Haddon Hall, where Bowie played him demos of "Changes" and "Life on Mars?" in "their raw brilliance". He recalled: "He [played] the finest selection of songs I have ever heard in one sitting in my entire life...I couldn't wait to get into the studio and record them."[10] Bowie plays a saxophone solo on the final recording – his first feature of the instrument[12]– which he recollected was recorded "when I was still going through ideas of using melodic saxophone."[4] Bowie has said that the track "started out as a parody of a nightclub song, a kind of throwaway".[13][14]
Composition[edit]
Music[edit]
Musically, "Changes" is an art pop song.[15][16] While primarily in 4/4 common time, the time signature changes to 2/4 twice (on the lines "different man" and "necks in it"), and four simultaneous bars of 3/4 feature different chords on each bar and are accompanied by Woodmansey's drum fills.[3] According to James Perone, it features a "standard British pop song structure", with "clearly defined" verses, choruses and middle-eight sections.[17] The song begins on a tonic chord (C major 7th) piano and strings, thereafter moving up in semitones: D♭add6th, D minor7, E♭7, F7. Critic Wilfrid Mellers described this intro as "near-anarchic", finding that the sequence "violates orthodox musical grammar".[3] From there, the piano follows the same sequence: C–E–G–B (Cmaj7), D–F–A–C (Dm7), F–A–C–E (Fmaj7), and E♭–G–B♭–D♭ (E♭7). O'Leary calls the progression "quintessential Bowie": it was "found by random movement, that sounded 'right' despite being technically 'wrong'."[3]
After an "oh yeah" from Bowie, piano and kick drum eighth notes build anticipation before a distinctive riff begins.[3] According to author Peter Doggett, Bowie did not know the chord changes on guitar or piano, but "he followed his fingers as they crept, slowly up and down the keyboard, augmenting familiar shapes or simply reproducing them a step or two along the ivories."[5] Played by piano, saxophone, bass and strings, the riff is an eighth note melody that Doggett describes as a rising "diatonic major descent".[3][5] O'Leary notes that the riff only appears twice in the entire song: once before the first verse and second after the first chorus.[3]
The piano and bass are similar to the album track "Oh! You Pretty Things", going up and down a C to D scale. Doggett writes: "It was as if the piano was scared to rest in one place for more than a couple of beats, in case it would be hemmed in or halted. By restlessly moving, it kept its options open and its spirit alive."[5] Like "Oh! You Pretty Things", "Changes" ends how it begins: on the C major 7th chord, although the chord sequence is in reverse. Saxophone, piano, strings and bass all play their final notes, fading into the distance.[3]
Lyrics[edit]
The lyrics of "Changes" focus on the compulsive nature of artistic reinvention and distancing oneself from the rock mainstream.[20] Perone calls them "thought-provoking," and "clearly autobiographical."[17] At this point in his career, Bowie was frequently being told how to musically progress by his managers and labels, leading him to experiment with genres such as folk, hard rock and soul.[3] This is reflected in the first verse, in which the narrator looks at himself through a mirror to help find his true identity. Perone argues that the verse serves as a "public acknowledgment" that these earlier styles, all of which failed to earn him stardom, were not the "true David Bowie style."[12] Biographer Nicholas Pegg identifies the line "I turned myself to face me" as mirroring Bowie's encounter with himself in his 1970 track "The Width of a Circle".[4] O'Leary writes that with "Changes", Bowie commits to a "life of constant revision."[3] By saying "look out you rock 'n' rollers", Bowie is "throwing the gauntlet down to existing rockers" and "putting a distance between himself and the rock fraternity."[20]
Like "Life on Mars?", "Changes" was a response to Frank Sinatra's "My Way"; biographer David Buckley cites the line "turn and face the strange" as "not a valedictory farewell, but a prophetic hello."[18] According to Buckley, the phrase 'strange fascination' "not only embodies a continued quest for the new and the bizarre but also carries with it the force of compulsion, the notion of having to change to stay afloat artistically."[21] The first verse elucidates the three most important components in Bowie's quest for stardom: the themes of identity, the "mutability" of character" and a "sense of play" in both first and third person, signaling the creation of Ziggy Stardust. Throughout the 1970s, Bowie had a "pathological fear" of repeating himself, both musically and visually. He gave himself the epithet 'faker' and proclaimed himself as "pop's fraud; the arch-dissembler."[21] Pegg states that his identification of himself as the 'faker' gives him anxiety, believing that he is "much too fast" to be affected by how others' opinion of him.[4]
The song's chorus, Bowie stuttering the 'ch' at the beginning of the word 'changes',[18] has been compared to the English rock band the Who,[22] specifically their 1965 song "My Generation". Both songs have stuttering vocals and similar lyrics ("hope I die before I get old" versus "pretty soon now you're gonna get older").[4][23] The second verse concerns clashes between children and their parents, urging them to allow their children to be themselves as teenagers.[12] This is reflected in the line "Time may change me, but I can't trace time", which Pegg believes resembles Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'".[4] Bowie had previously spoken about this issue in an interview with The Times in 1968: "We feel our parents' generation has lost control, given up, they're scared of the future. I feel it's basically their fault that things are so bad."[4] In Rolling Stone's contemporary review of Hunky Dory, John Mendelsohn acknowledged this, considering "Changes" to be "construed as a young man's attempt to reckon how he'll react when it's his time to be on the maligned side of the generation schism."[24] The song has also been interpreted by NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray as touting "Modern Kids as a New Race".[8]
Analysis[edit]
Retrospectively, "Changes" is described by Bowie's biographers as a manifesto of his entire career.[4][19][42] Throughout the 1970s, Bowie changed his musical styles and appearances constantly; Doggett notes that each album he released between 1974 and 1977—Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station and Low—could not have predicted the next.[19] He was dubbed the "chameleon of rock" by numerous publications and biographers due to his constant reinvention throughout his career,[56][57] which matches the overall theme in "Changes".[19] Buckley notes that 1971 was a pivotal year for Bowie; it was the year in which he became "something of a pop-art agent provocateur.[18] In a time when rock musicians looked to traditions and established standards, Bowie looked to be radically different and challenge tradition, reinventing himself again and again, thereby creating new standards and conventions.[18][56] Doggett also notes that "Changes" is a "statement of purpose": it was the first track on Hunky Dory, the first time his audience had heard of him since The Man Who Sold the World (1970), and his previous hard rock and metallic sound was not present. Furthermore, he states that the song was unlike "Space Oddity" and its parent album, but rather "pure, unashamedly melodic, gleefully commercial, gorgeously mellifluous pop."[19]
Live versions[edit]
Bowie played the song for the BBC's Johnny Walker Lunchtime Show on 22 May 1972.[4] This was broadcast in early June 1972 and eventually released on Bowie at the Beeb in 2000.[58] Bowie frequently performed "Changes" throughout his concert tours. According to the artist, "it turned into this monster that nobody would stop asking for at concerts: 'Dye-vid, Dye-vid – do Changes!' I had no idea it would become such a popular thing."[14] Performances from the Ziggy Stardust Tour have been released on Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture (1983) and Live Santa Monica '72 (2008).[59][60] Another previously unreleased performance from Boston Music Hall on 1 October 1972 was released in 1989 on the original Sound + Vision Plus box set and on the 2003 reissue of his 1973 album Aladdin Sane.[4]
Performances from the Diamond Dogs Tour have been released on David Live (1974),[61] Cracked Actor (Live Los Angeles '74) (2017),[62] and I'm Only Dancing (The Soul Tour 74) (2020).[63] Live versions from the 1976 Isolar Tour, the Glastonbury Festival and the Reality tour were released on Live Nassau Coliseum '76, Glastonbury 2000 (2018) and A Reality Tour (2010), respectively.[64][65][66] On 9 November 2006, Bowie performed the song with American singer Alicia Keys at the Black Ball fundraiser in New York. Also performing "Wild Is the Wind" and "Fantastic Voyage", it was Bowie's final live performance before his death in 2016.[4][67][68]