David Bowie has an incredibly impressive discography, ranging from glam rock to electronica, and everything in between. The Starman entered the music scene playing with various bands before making his big break as a solo artist, with his single “Space Oddity” hitting the top-five charts in the UK in 1969. With each new body of music, Bowie continued to reinvent himself and exhibit a different side of his intelligence and creative vision to the world.
The album that particularly stands out was released 50 years ago this year, in March 1975. Young Americans was a global triumph that started out as Bowie’s fascination with America and a curiosity to explore his career outside the UK. Young Americans is an investigation of American culture and an interrogation of the integrity of the American Dream.
The Meaning Behind David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’
Through his reinventions, David Bowie remained synonymous with glam rock. He was a pioneer of the genre and became a leading figure in the UK. Young Americans came to fruition as a result of Bowie feeling like he had perhaps exhausted the genre, and because of its roots in the UK, it seemed like an obvious choice to venture away from what he had already conquered. Speaking of his intrigue, Bowie famously said that “America supplied a need in me. It became a myth land.” And with that, he left to explore what they could give each other, music and beyond.
Young Americans faced all aspects of 1970s USA pretty head-on. The album explores themes of hollowness and superficial standards in modern life that felt somehow simultaneously obvious and unspoken. Bowie was, after all, a stranger to the States at this point, and to experience this unusual atmosphere for the first time was a strength. His distance from the contributing factors of this unknown land is what made his observations so astute. As an outsider, he was not yet at risk of falling victim to a pressure native to California that he had begun to notice culminating. Of Los Angeles, Bowie stated that “You can feel it in every avenue. It’s a kind of superficial calmness that they have developed to underplay the fact that there’s a lot of high pressure here.”
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This feeling of accepted superficiality is captured throughout the record, but perhaps most poignantly in, ironically, the most famous track, “Fame.” In the song, Bowie’s vocals are casually whining about fame and the annoyances it causes. You can hear his eyes roll as he sings. He tells us that fame makes a man hard to swallow, and all the famous desires are luxuries of limousines. But this is contrasted with more depressing statements that “what you need you have to borrow,” and a suggestion that there is a lack of real, authentic connection in the life of a famous man. In what feels like a confession to a friend or love interest, Bowie asks them, “Is it any wonder I rejected you first? Is it any wonder you are too cool to fool?” Here, there is an implication that those outside of fame are actually much cooler than those caught up in a world of foolishness and deception. Ultimately, fame and its superficial surroundings caused Bowie’s character to reject any authentic outsider before they could see beyond a curated star. As Bowie quoted, that is the result of obscuring high pressure with artificial calmness.
The Evolution of David Bowie
The lyrics of Young Americans were new in terms of content, but built upon Bowie’s existing talent for character-building and serving a narrative purpose. However, the music itself was in a completely new realm, and it would have been impossible without the move to America. Bowie was introduced to soul music, not present in the UK, and embraced it fully for the album. In a blog post on Bowie’s website, Jason Draper says the record was “Ushering in a whole new era for Bowie, and leading the charge for a breed of white pop singers with soul music in their hearts, Young Americans served notice of the ever-changing star’s most radical reinvention to date.” Bowie explored R&B and soul, which felt like a natural progression from the disco-mania experienced in the decade. This marked the beginning of Bowie’s “Plastic Soul” characterization. This is the character that, 50 years on, feels the most poignant.
Bowie recognized his position as a white man, embarking on a project that used elements of soul music, and used the “Plastic Soul” title to express self-awareness in doing so. The “plastic” addition to soul differentiated his efforts from Black musical artists, and acknowledged a less organic approach to songwriting as a white man with these influences. It was a commentary on how, in America, influences could seemingly be taken and repackaged. In the title track, “Young Americans,” a powerful line that reflects this notion is “Black’s got respect, and white’s got his Soul Train.”
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This album feels almost so much more than just a record. The narrative delivery is just outstanding, and shows the potential that music has to afford us an iconic work of storytelling and feeling. Young Americans shows that reinvention comes from both an internal and external entity of the musical artist. In this record, Bowie and America oscillate to create an arc of comprehension, beginning with a mutual unknown, to developing a candid understanding that resulted in an exceptional piece of art.
Bowie uses upbeat music to criticize the world around him, and ultimately himself, because he recognized he was in it. He fearlessly criticized and mocked himself for the sake of an accurate expression of what was the contemporary climate. 50 years on, his observations feel just as, if not more apt. The rise of influencers, social media, and filters is a reminder that things can remain vapid if not questioned as Bowie did. As he sings in “Young Americans,” “Ain’t that close to love? Well, ain’t that poster love? Well, it ain’t that Barbie doll, her heart’s been broken, just like yours has.” In essence, what you see isn’t real. Be young and stupid, not gullible.