Today it only seems right to look at a song of David Bowie’s; let’s make it one of my favorites – ‘Young Americans’.

When I listen to this record it disarms me. I can’t help but notice great things about the songwriting, some of which I’ll get into here, but as with all great recordings my song-analysis brain succumbs to the sheer pleasure of listening and feeling… and to the groove.

That said, here are some fantastic aspects of this song:

* The Chorus. The words and the melody (sung by the ‘background’ singers, not Bowie) fit perfectly – a textbook example of the words being sung in the same way they’d be spoken, if you wanted to emphasize the same feeling.

Young A-MERicans
Young A-MERicans
She wants a YOUNG A–MER–ICAN
Aw…ullRIGHT!

Perfect!

* The Melody. The melody is pretty simple and bluesy – mostly a pentatonic scale – but Bowie works virtuosic variations. And his interpretation… his voice ranges from deep to falsetto, strong to vulnerable. Plus he continually switches up his rhythm, line to line. In another instance this might make the song hard to follow, but the chorus is so strong and the chords are repetitive, as are the amazing background vocals, which really ground the song (you almost can’t call them background vocals in this case – how about foreground vocals?). Bowie’s vocal works in contrast to these more static elements. Really a tour de force by an English guy singing his version of soul music.

I particularly like how, at the peak of the Chorus melody (‘She wants a Young American’), the melody hits an ‘E’ (on ‘Young’) against the ‘Dminor’ chord, then on ‘Aww…’ a “D’ over the ‘F’ chord… and it ends and peaks (on ”Right!’) on a ‘C’ over the ‘G’ chord (!).

*The Harmony. In the first part of the song, the Chords repeat – ||: C | Dminor | F | G :||. The one exception is the two bars before the Chorus (| F | G |) where the singers declare, “Aw…ull RIGHT’ before returning to the 4 bar chord pattern for the Chorus. A great example of breaking up a pattern to emphasize what comes next.

There are some surprises in store, though. After a 4 bar Dave Sanborn alto sax solo (| Aminor | F | Aminor | F |)… the bridge chords:

|| Aminor Eminor | C | Aminor Eminor | F | Emajor ||

Ah-ha… Key change! Going to an ‘E’ chord here instead of Eminor sets up the next 4 chords – | Dmajor | Eminor | F G | Eminor A | – which glide us into the last part of the song a whole step up – in Dmajor (instead of Cmajor).

A great touch is that the last 4 bars of the bridge/modulation is played solo on a dinky-sounding chorused/out of tune guitar that completely undercuts the potential cheesiness of the new key entering. Brilliant!

* The Lyrics. Presumably the sometimes oblique but always provocative and emotional lyrics are an example of Bowie’s ‘cut-up’ style of writing lyrics. He would write out the lyric ideas he had for a song, cut each line into a separate sliver of paper, and rearrange the slices of paper until he had something that seemed right (he explains in the bottom video below). So a lot of the writing is not linear. But in its own way it tells a story and is definitely about some interesting things – America, sex relations, race relations and differences, family, children… pretty big stuff.

I especially like what he does in the first few lines, and a bunch of times afterward:

They pulled in just behind the fridge
He lays her down, he frowns
‘Gee my life’s a funny thing, am I still too young?’

He goes back and forth, with no setup, between external story and internal monologue. But I still think overall the main thing here is how the words sound and sing.

* The Groove. This song is a funky situation! Carlos Alomar, Andy Newmark, Willie Weeks, Mike Garson, and Larry Washington are a freight (soul) train and the Voices Of Doom – Luther Vandross, Ava Cherry, and Robin Clark – sing their way into music history.

David Bowie (1947-2016) was a badass. Listen to ‘Young Americans’ below for audio proof.

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