It's No POLL: "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" Poll

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Poll Results

OptionVotes
"Ashes to Ashes" – 4:23 8
"Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" – 5:10 6
"It's No Game (Part 1)" – 4:15 5
"Teenage Wildlife" – 6:51 2
"Fashion" – 4:46 1
"Up the Hill Backwards" – 3:13 1
"Kingdom Come" (Tom Verlaine) – 3:42 1
"Scream Like a Baby" – 3:35 0
"Because You're Young" – 4:51 0
"It's No Game (Part 2)" – 4:22 0


Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 17 August 2010 18:48 (fifteen years ago)

The obvious choice is the correct one here.

rhythm fixated member (chap), Tuesday, 17 August 2010 18:50 (fifteen years ago)

Listening to this album after lunch was a mistake: the singing almost made me wretch.

Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 17 August 2010 18:54 (fifteen years ago)

i was gonna start a poll on this a few months ago but.....
What's the best track on "Scary Monsters"?

buzza, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:00 (fifteen years ago)

Played this earlier this week. Side A is super fantastic. "Ashes to Ashes" is probably the best, yes, but I've got a lot of love for the title track. The way it starts up and the guitar(s) start chasing those pummeling drums... there's so much forward momentum in that track. And the continuous screeching, metallic guitars in the background are endlessly fascinating.

willem, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:01 (fifteen years ago)

woulda gone with "Up the POLL Backwards" for a title

teenage wildlife i think, not huge on bowie but really like this record

buzza, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:02 (fifteen years ago)

xpost lol I said mostly the same on the earlier poll

willem, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:02 (fifteen years ago)

Whoops. Sorry. I couldn't find it in the archives.

Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:02 (fifteen years ago)

because of the bloody " ", methinks.

Ioannis, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:09 (fifteen years ago)

never knew he did it like this, too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL8-quh38vs

willem, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:33 (fifteen years ago)

"It's No Game" Tape weirdness intro + Japanese intro + voice breaks on "Heavennnnnnnnnn" + Shut up! SHUT UP!!!!

dlp9001, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:57 (fifteen years ago)

I really like It's No Game part 2 as well. It's a nice palate cleanser.

rhythm fixated member (chap), Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:59 (fifteen years ago)

Anyone think this is the weakest of his "classic" albums?

Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 17 August 2010 20:14 (fifteen years ago)

Kingdom Come

kornrulez6969, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 20:24 (fifteen years ago)

"It's No Game" Tape weirdness intro + Japanese intro + voice breaks on "Heavennnnnnnnnn" + Shut up! SHUT UP!!!!

― dlp9001, Tuesday, 17 August 2010 19:57 (1 hour ago)

^ This

Hey Jabulani! Pope of four four two. (aldo), Tuesday, 17 August 2010 21:16 (fifteen years ago)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

System, Tuesday, 24 August 2010 23:01 (fifteen years ago)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

System, Wednesday, 25 August 2010 23:01 (fifteen years ago)

missed the poll here, but would have gone with teenage wildlife

Dr X O'Skeleton, Thursday, 26 August 2010 09:58 (fifteen years ago)

My vote would've been "Fashion" easy.

ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor), Thursday, 26 August 2010 17:55 (fifteen years ago)

If ilxor had voted I wouldn't feel quite so alone in the world...

hearing-impaired leppard (Paul in Santa Cruz), Thursday, 26 August 2010 22:30 (fifteen years ago)

Missed this poll, but I believe I voted either "Ashes To Ashes" or "Scream Like a Baby" last time around, depending on whether I voted for the one I like best or the one that needed the vote most.

Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Friday, 27 August 2010 21:56 (fifteen years ago)

two years pass...

Then Play Long gets to Scary Monsters (after a fashion).

Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Sunday, 3 February 2013 17:12 (thirteen years ago)

The piano was Roy, whom he used before on Station To Station, and he was in the next room – for they were all in New York; it was cheaper and asked fewer questions than anyone or anywhere in London – to Springsteen’s band, who were making The River, and hi Bruce, can we borrow Roy for a little while (“Independence Day” is the present record’s “Be My Wife”)?

nice

the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 3 February 2013 18:14 (thirteen years ago)

two years pass...

Is it just me or does "Ashes to Ashes" stick out like a sore thumb on Scary Monsters? It's one of the best songs of Bowie's career and of the 1980's - the rest of the record is a muddy and impenetrable mess.

flappy bird, Sunday, 17 January 2016 00:33 (ten years ago)

it's just you

AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 17 January 2016 00:39 (ten years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgpWCK075Do

AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 17 January 2016 00:39 (ten years ago)

I just posted this on the other Scary Monsters thread...

-----

Some speculation by Momus on the origins of the title track: http://imomus.com/index032010a.html (just over midway down the page)

Now here's producer Tony Visconti talking about recording the song and playing a rare early version in which Bowie sings some alternative lines about too many people with too many teeth.

"We told Manhattan-based funk musicians to play like a British punk group," says Visconti.

The "British punk group" in question was almost certainly Joy Division, a Bowie favourite at the time. Scary Monsters has many points in common with She's Lost Control, released the year before

Whereas Ian Curtis is singing about his female character's epilepsy, Bowie sings about a woman consumed by anxiety and claustrophobia, running amok, pursued by demons, monsters, creeps. Dennis Davis, Bowie's drummer, is playing suspiciously Stephen Morris-like snare fills, as though someone has just played him the first Joy Division album right there at The Power Station. It's the electronic syndrum-cowbell that punctuates both songs that really gives the game away, though.

Although Visconti is quick to claim credit for running a cowbell through a guitar distortion pedal -- "we just can't leave things as they are, not David and myself" -- some of the kudos should go to Martin Hannett, who produced She's Lost Control and paid meticulous attention to the drum sounds. The Scary Monsters cowbell does such a similar tonal four-bar curve to Joy Division's electronic snare that it's hard not to think it must've been deliberate. But it was a completely legitimate payback; Joy Division had themselves drawn liberal inspiration from Bowie's work with Iggy Pop.

The "rare early version" linked to from Momus' page sounds, um, like Joy Division

Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 17 January 2016 02:09 (ten years ago)

Is it just me or does "Ashes to Ashes" stick out like a sore thumb on Scary Monsters? It's one of the best songs of Bowie's career and of the 1980's - the rest of the record is a muddy and impenetrable mess.

It lands differently for different people - this is my fave Bowie record by far.

Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 17 January 2016 02:13 (ten years ago)

I've always wrestled with this record – it is in some ways like a consolidation of his Berlin records, Lodger in particular, as well as, yes, an acknowledgement of post-punk, on which he (and those records) were perhaps the biggest influence.

But it also feels a bit schizophrenic and self-conscious to me. "Ashes to Ashes" doesn't feel like it belongs on the same record as the two Fripp-assisted tracks that surround it (title track and "Fashion"). Meanwhile, something like "Teenage Wildlife" sounds far too much like "(We Can Still) Be Heroes."

Part of this should probably be chalked up to Eno's departure – the Talking Heads experienced a similar vacuum on Speaking in Tongues in which they rolled out a similar bag of tricks and the same personnel but with diminishing artistic returns.

As a result, I find the record to be something less than the sum of its parts – tho "It's No Game (Part 1)," the title track, "Ashes to Ashes" and "Fashion" are undeniably classics. Others perhaps as well.

Naive Teen Idol, Sunday, 17 January 2016 15:31 (ten years ago)

six years pass...

It's got nothing to do with you
if one can grasp it

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 6 April 2022 23:57 (three years ago)

Side 1: one of the best things Bowie ever did
Side 2: just OK

Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 7 April 2022 00:26 (three years ago)

The 50s-style choral vocals on "Up the Hill Backwards" were like a test run for the backing vocals on Let's Dance. In 1980 the singing sounded depersonalized and "in quotation marks", but the style returns with a much sunnier feel three years later.

Halfway there but for you, Thursday, 7 April 2022 00:27 (three years ago)

Side 1: one of the best things Bowie ever did
Side 2: just OK

― Zelda Zonk

I've come around to the experiments on Side Two. It's as if the New Romantics scared him into wearing more colorful vocal plumage.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 7 April 2022 00:31 (three years ago)

Any side containing “Teenage Wildlife” by definition cannot be just ok

Davey D, Thursday, 7 April 2022 01:09 (three years ago)

SHUT UP

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 7 April 2022 02:09 (three years ago)

Teenage Wildlife is the best of side 2, I'll give you that! But the rest is nothing that's ever going to be in anyone's top 20 Bowie tracks...

Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 7 April 2022 02:21 (three years ago)

I love how weary and resigned “It’s No Game Pt 2” is, tho. And the record is WEIRD, probably weirder than anything since Hunky Dory’s side 2.

assert (matttkkkk), Thursday, 7 April 2022 02:40 (three years ago)

To be insulted by these fascists, it's so degrading

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 7 April 2022 17:45 (three years ago)

I'm okay
you're so-so

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 7 April 2022 17:46 (three years ago)

Shiruetto ya kage ga kakumei o miteiru
Mo tengoku no jiyuu no kaidan wa nai

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 7 April 2022 17:48 (three years ago)

eleven months pass...

And no one will have seen and no one will confess
The fingerprints will prove that you couldn't pass the test

Ned Raggett, Friday, 17 March 2023 01:04 (two years ago)

Fashion totally robbed here

meat and two vdgg (emsworth), Friday, 17 March 2023 02:12 (two years ago)

two years pass...

No athletic program, no discipline, no book
He just sat in the backseat swearing he'd seek revenge
But he jumped into the furnace
Singing old songs we loved...

The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 10 January 2026 16:11 (four weeks ago)

This

Davey D, Saturday, 10 January 2026 16:25 (four weeks ago)

Harsh

"It's No Game (Part 2)" – 4:22 0

piscesx, Monday, 12 January 2026 03:27 (four weeks ago)

I've really been into "Because We're Young." Reminds me a little bit of "Neighborhood Threat" from "Lust for Life."

Josh in Chicago, Monday, 12 January 2026 13:40 (four weeks ago)


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