Oh! You Pretty Things
Bowie recorded his own version at Trident Studios in London during the sessions for Hunky Dory between June and July 1971.
You Pretty Things" are dark, reflecting ideals of the occultist Aleister Crowley and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, while making literary references to Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel Childhood's End and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel The Coming Race.
Upon completing a promotional tour of America in early 1971, David Bowie returned to his home at Haddon Hall in Beckenham, London.
In total, he composed over three-dozen songs at Haddon, many of which would appear on his next album Hunky Dory and its follow-up The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
[13][14] According to Noone, Bowie struggled with the piano part: "David had some trouble playing it through completely, so we recorded it in three sections, something Mickie Most helped arrange.
"[11] Most also used acoustic guitar on the recording; according to biographer Chris O'Leary, this was "to help the chord changes fall easier on the ear".
[11] NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray opined the change to be "one of rock and roll's most outstanding examples of a singer failing to achieve any degree of empathy whatsoever with the mood and content of a lyric.
[11] Work on Hunky Dory officially began at Trident Studios in London on 8 June 1971 and concluded on 6 August.
[3] Kevin Cann writes that the song had been recorded by 26 July, as the finished track appeared on a promotional album compiled for Gem Productions.
[24] However, Wakeman contended in a 2017 BBC interview that Bowie played piano in the beginning section before he took over for the rest of the track.
You Pretty Things" are dark, reflecting ideals of the occultist Aleister Crowley and his Golden Dawn,[30] and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his theory of Übermensch, or "Superman".
[31][32] Other songs Bowie had written during this period, including "The Supermen" from The Man Who Sold the World, reflect Nietzsche's theory of Übermensch.
[33] There is a "strong hint" of Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 science fiction novel Childhood's End and a direct reference to Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel The Coming Race.
In 1976 Bowie said "a lot of the songs do in fact deal with some kind of schizophrenia, or alternating id problems, and 'Pretty Things' is one of them.
[35] Carr and Murray state that the lyrics herald "the impending obsolescence of the human race in favour of an alliance between arriving aliens and the youth of the present society.
He comments on Bowie's indifferent delivery of the line "all the nightmares came today / And it looks as though they're here to stay", which he compares to Black Sabbath.
In his analysis, the song praises the children that will replace us, but because they will suffer the same fate as us, there's no reason to fear the upcoming apocalypse.
[3][39] The song contains a descending diatonic major progression that Bowie would use for fellow album track "Changes" and later "All the Young Dudes".
[30][36] The opening lyrics concern a man waking someone up for breakfast in the middle of what O'Leary describes as a "fresh, apocalyptic morning".
In the first verse, Bowie uses sudden shifts in tonality, from holding one note on the line "wake up you sleepyhead" to ranging across intervals: lowering on "put another log on the fire for me" (which goes from G to B) and rising on "and it looks as though they're here to stay".
[3] This line is the inspiration for the name of a group of young telepaths called the Homo Superior in Roger Price's 1973 The Tomorrow People.
Cann argues that the song's placement on Hunky Dory displayed Bowie's growing evolution as a songwriter.
[46] Retrospectively, Michael Gallucci of Ultimate Classic Rock also called it one of the best songs on the album, citing it as an example of showcasing Bowie's growth as a songwriter and proving he would become an unpredictable artist.
[51] Two years later, Alexis Petridis of The Guardian voted it number eight in his list of Bowie's 50 greatest songs, describing it as one of Bowie's finest uses of an apocalyptic scenario up to that point and concluding: "[It is] a song that sets an incredibly bleak message to a melody so lovely it could be covered by the lead singer of Herman's Hermits.
You Pretty Things" three times for BBC radio programmes: on 3 June and 21 September 1971, and 22 May 1972 for In Concert: John Peel, Sounds of the 70s: Bob Harris, and The Johnnie Walker Lunchtime Show, respectively.
An outtake from the same session, in which Bowie stumbles over the lines and gets them wrong on several occasions, is hidden among easter eggs on the same DVD.
