"Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" is a song by English musician David Bowie released on 17 November 2014 as the lead single from the 2014 compilation album Nothing Has Changed.

Co-produced by Bowie and longtime collaborator Tony Visconti, the song originated after the two saw bandleader and composer Maria Schneider perform with her orchestra in May 2014.

Following workshop sessions in mid-June, the track was recorded officially at Avatar Studios in New York on 24 July 2014, with contributions from Schneider's orchestra.

Premiered in October 2014, the song garnered positive reviews from music critics, but some felt its inclusion on a compilation album downplayed the track.

The new version features players from the original, including McCaslin, drummer Mark Guiliana and guitarist Ben Monder, along with pianist Jason Lindner, bassist Tim Lefebvre and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem on percussion.

On 8 May 2014, David Bowie and longtime collaborator Tony Visconti visited the Birdland club in Manhattan to see the bandleader and composer Maria Schneider perform with her orchestra.

"[1] At Schneider's insistence, Bowie travelled to the 55 Bar, a jazz club in New York on 1 June, to see an experimental quartet featuring saxophonist Donny McCaslin and drummer Mark Guiliana.

Along with McCaslin, Guiliana, trombonist Ryan Keberle and bassist Jay Anderson, Schneider recruited avant-jazz guitarist Ben Monder, an occasional member of her orchestra.

"[5] According to Visconti, who co-produced the track with Bowie, Schneider and the core members of her band "jammed to the bass line for several hours ... over the course of three long sessions in a rehearsal studio".

She initially had the players improvise over an E major chord, but felt it was "too much", and changed it to a "B section" for Bowie, which allowed him to continue to revise the lyrics up to the final recording.

Sue's motif throughout the song is the four-note phrase played by the brass and flute sections, and sung by Bowie in the first two verses.

[1][4] Eventually, the narrator accuses Sue of betrayal ("I found your note that you wrote last night / It can't be right you went with him") and murders her ("I pushed you down beneath the weeds"), kisses her corpse and says goodbye.

[1] The bass line played by Keberle borrows heavily from Plastic Soul's 1997 single "Brand New Heavy", which earned that song's writers, Paul Bateman and Bob Bhamra, co-writing credits on "Sue" with Bowie and Schneider.

[10] In The Guardian, Alexis Petridis gave the track a positive review, saying it was an indication that Bowie is not afraid to continue experimenting in new genres.

This single edit, which contains only six verses instead of eight, is accompanied by a monochrome music video directed by Tom Hingston, who previously created a short clip for The Next Day track "I'd Rather Be High".

[1][4][18] Shot in London, the video features clips of Bowie performing in a studio alongside the orchestra that were filmed during the July session by Jimmy Miller.

[19] During the sessions for what would be his final studio album Blackstar (2016), Bowie decided to re-record "Sue" from scratch, using the core backing band of McCaslin, Guiliana, pianist Jason Lindner and bassist Tim Lefebvre.

[21] Monder provided additional guitar overdubs, while James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem played percussion; his work on Arcade Fire's Reflektor inspired Bowie to create a remix of "Love Is Lost" for The Next Day Extra.

[23] Called "Re-Sue" in Bowie's handwritten notes for the album, the new version was recorded on 2 February 2015 at the Magic Shop in New York, using the original as a template.

Pegg describes the re-recording as "a harder, punchier attack, driven by Guiliana's relentless drums, a brilliant, stammering bass line from Tim Lefebvre, and a series of atmospheric guitar overdubs from Ben Monder".

[25] Stephen Dalton of Louder writes that the re-recording "feels sharper, denser and heavier", with added funk rock guitar lines and "percussive shudders".

[27] In Rolling Stone, David Fricke describes the re-recording as having a "dynamic honing" take on the original, featuring "more malevolent programming".

[17] The re-recording of "Sue" was released on 8 January 2016 as the fourth track on Bowie's final album Blackstar, sequenced between "Lazarus" and "Girl Loves Me".

[31][32] In his review of Blackstar, Andy Gill of The Independent described the remakes of both "Sue" and its B-side "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore" as "like footnotes to the transitional experiments of 'Station to Station', but with less potent melodies, and less interest in pleasing forms".

"[34] Rancic writes that while the original was downplayed by its inclusion on a compilation album, the remake provides "the actual left turn that The Next Day announced", in that it showed the artist was still "creatively unpredictable".