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Changes (David Bowie song)

"Changes"
Bowiechanges2.jpg
Single by David Bowie
from the album Hunky Dory
B-side "Andy Warhol"
Released 7 January 1972
Format 7" single
Recorded Trident Studios, London, summer 1971
Genre Art pop
Length 3:33
Label RCA Records
2160
Writer(s) David Bowie
Producer(s) Ken Scott, David Bowie
David Bowie singles chronology
"Moonage Daydream"
(Arnold Corns)
(1971)
"Changes"
(1972)
"Starman"
(1972)
Hunky Dory track listing
"Changes"
(1)
"Oh! You Pretty Things"
(2)
Alternative cover
Music video
"Changes" (Live) on YouTube

"Changes" is a song by David Bowie, originally released on the album Hunky Dory in December 1971 and as a single in January 1972. Despite missing the Billboard top 40, "Changes" became one of Bowie's best-known songs. The lyrics are often seen as a manifesto for his chameleonic personality, the frequent change of the world today, and frequent reinventions of his musical style throughout the 1970s. This single is cited as David Bowie's official North American debut, despite the fact that the song "The Man Who Sold the World" was released in North America two years prior. This was the last song Bowie performed live on stage before his retirement from live performances at the end of 2006.

The song ranked number 128 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It is one of four of Bowie's songs to be included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. On 27 November 2016, the Grammy Hall of Fame announced its induction, along with that of another 24 songs.

It charted for the first time on the UK Singles Chart on 15 January 2016 at number 49 following Bowie's death.

Bowie has said that the track "started out as a parody of a nightclub song, a kind of throwaway". The musical arrangement featured the composer's saxophone, Rick Wakeman's keyboards and Mick Ronson's strings, while the stuttering chorus has been compared to The Who.

The lyrics focused on the compulsive nature of artistic reinvention ("Strange fascination, fascinating me / Changes are taking the pace I'm going through") and distancing oneself from the rock mainstream ("Look out, you rock 'n' rollers"). The song has also been interpreted as touting "Modern Kids as a New Race", a theme echoed on the following album track, "Oh! You Pretty Things". Rolling Stone's contemporary review of Hunky Dory considered that "Changes" could 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".


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Wikipedia

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