Wild is the Wind

http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2832

I’ve fallen head over heels for Bowie’s cover of “Wild is the Wind” which closes out Station to Station (listen here).

It’s a beautiful vocal performance, but what grabs me most is the contrast between the words and the vocal tone. If you read the words, it’s a love song, but if you didn’t understand English and just listened to the vocal performance, you’d think it was a funeral elegy. It sounds desperately sad, mournful, longing–whatever love this is about is either long gone or never was.

The other reason it works is the dark undertone of the lyrics. On one level it’s just your typical hyperbolic love song — “With your kiss my life begins / You’re spring to me / All things to me / Don’t you know you’re life itself?” — but on another level it’s the dark, obsessive, all-consuming, self-destructive side of love. What does it say about your own life if it doesn’t even exist without the other person? The forlorn, yearning vocal delivery particularly enhances the underlying darkness.

The other reason it works so perfectly as the closer for Station to Station is that (as I rambled yesterday) this album is all about searching for human connection and meaning to life. The song rather perfectly embodies both.

In other “Wow, Laura, you have a disturbingly obsessive personality” news:

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Current Mood: weird

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