Top 15 David Bowie ’80s Songs

David Bowie was never one to stick to the status quo. If one could describe his modus operandi it might just boil down to “be yourself.”

This was true for much of Bowie’s career but perhaps most of all during the ’80s. By then, he had plenty of experience under his belt – experience that had led him to a relatively content point in his life.

“I’m much happier than I was in my early 20s,” he told the writer Gary Graff in 1987 (via Billboard). “At that time, I always felt I should have been older. I’ve caught up with myself, really.”

Bowie’s output in the ’70s may have been the most creative and ultimately influential, but the ’80s is where he had the most commercial success. He hit a stride and he knew it.

“I don’t find it a problem to use the techniques and styles I’ve used before, where at one time I thought, ‘I can’t do that!,'” he also told Graff in 1987. “I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement — it had to be innovative, it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original. Now I’m not trying so obsessively to be up against the sky. It’s almost like I’m [finding] a style — a David Bowie Sound!”

There is much to appreciate in Bowie’s ’80s catalog, but below we’ve decided on 15 of the very best selections, listed in chronological order.

1. “Ashes to Ashes”
From: Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)

Bowie didn’t do a whole lot of looking backward, but he did reintroduce a familiar character in 1980’s “Ashes to Ashes” in the form of Major Tom — almost as though he was closing the door for good on the ’70s. Fun fact: that’s Roy Bittan of Bruce Springteen‘s E Street Band playing what’s known as a flanged piano on this song. Leave it to Bowie to write a hit about corruption, drugs, space and loss of innocence.

 

2. “Fashion”
From: Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)

Another classic selection from 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is “Fashion,” featuring Robert Fripp of King Crimson on lead guitar. Bowie, whose own experimentations with clothing, makeup and general external appearance in the ’70s triggered more than a few raised eyebrows, had begun to see fashion on the whole as something people were now trying too hard at in the ’80s. “When I first started going to discos in New York in the early ’70s there was sort of a very high-powered enthusiasm and it had a natural course about it, which seems now to have been replaced by an insidious, grim determination to be fashionable, as though it’s actually a vocation,” he said in 1980 (via bowiebible.com). “There’s some kind of strange aura about it, and I just wanted to sort of capture that feeling in the song ‘Fashion.’ It’s about that grim determination more than anything else.”

 

3. “Under Pressure” With Queen
From: October 1981 Single

Can you imagine a world in which “Under Pressure” was sung only by Queen? Or only by Bowie? We can’t. There is something inherently perfect about their combination, which proved itself when the song and its famous bass line went to No. 1 in the U.K. Understandably, Bowie and the members of Queen, two enormously creative and original forces, did not always see eye-to-eye in the studio. “I never liked it, to be honest, the way it was mixed,” Queen’s Brian May told Guitar World in 2024. “But I do recognize that it works. It’s a point of view, and it’s done very well. And people love it.”

 

4. “Modern Love”
From: Let’s Dance (1983)

As the ’70s gave way to the ’80s, New Wave music developed, a style Bowie dipped his toes in. “Modern Love” is a good example of this, though it still borrowed elements of rock, soul and funk. Stevie Ray Vaughan contributed, as well as Nile Rodgers of Chic. “He was compelled to do things that he felt were just the right thing to do,” Rodgers told Rolling Stone in 2016. “He didn’t think about whether we would like it or not. He just thought that it was something that he felt like he had to do.” Or in Bowie’s words from “Modern Love:” “I know when to go out, know when to stay in, get things done.”

 

5. “Let’s Dance”
From: Let’s Dance (1983)

Bowie himself was less than thrilled with what the song “Let’s Dance” represented to him as an artist. “I went mainstream in a major way with the song ‘Let’s Dance,'” he said to Interview magazine in 1995. “I pandered to that in my next few albums, and what I found I had done was put a box around myself. It was very hard for people to see me as anything other than the person in the suit who did ‘Let’s Dance’ – and it was driving me mad because it took all my passion for experimenting away.” Still, it’s hard to argue with the catchiness of this song and with the fact that it was a No. 1 hit in both the U.K. and U.S.

 

6. “China Girl”
From: Let’s Dance (1983)

In 1983, Bowie released the better-known version of “China Girl,” which he and Iggy Pop co-wrote in 1976. Pop included his version on his 1977 album The Idiot, but it’s Bowie’s rendition — a bit more pop-sounding and propelled by Carmine Rojas’ front-and-center bass part — that most people remember. Again, that’s Vaughan with an exemplary guitar solo. “I think Stevie only heard ‘China Girl’ once before he started wailing away perfectly,” engineer Bob Clearmountain said in the book Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan. “At the end of the section, there’s a chord change, and he lands on the wrong note, so it sounded a little dissonant. We played it in the control room, looked at each other and winced, and I said, “Let’s fix that.’ But David said, ‘No. It’s perfect.’ He liked dissonance, and he loved first takes.”

 

7. “White Light/White Heat” Live (by the Velvet Underground)
From: Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture (1983)

Pretty much from the moment Bowie became aware of the Velvet Underground, he recognized a sort of kinship between himself and Lou Reed. “I don’t think I ever felt that I was in a position to become a Velvet’s clone,” Bowie said in 1997, “but there were elements of what Lou was doing that I thought [were] just unavoidably right for both the times and for where music was going.” Bowie recorded a live version of “White Light/White Heat” in London in 1973, but did not put it out until 1983. We think it was worth the wait.

 

8. “Blue Jean”
From: Tonight (1984)

One thing Bowie was undeniably good at was writing sultry-sounding verses that gave way to a big, bold, catchy chorus. “Blue Jean” is a prime example of this, a song that seems to borrow from both ’60s psychedelic pop, English beat and traditional rockabilly, which might have been why it appealed to American audiences as well as British ones. “‘Blue Jean’ reminds me of Eddie Cochran,” Bowie said to NME in 1984 (via bowiebible.com). “It was inspired from that Eddie Cochran feeling, but that of course is very Troggs as well. I dunno…it’s quite eclectic, I suppose. What of mine isn’t?”

 

9. “Tonight” With Tina Turner
From: Tonight (1984)

Perhaps you’ve heard about Peter Frampton crediting Bowie with more or less saving his career. Tina Turner, with whom Bowie duetted on the title track to 1984’s Tonight, felt similarly. In 1983, both Bowie and Turner were signed to Capitol, though the label decided not to resign Turner to another contract. As Turner would later recall it, Bowie declined a dinner invitation with Capitol executives, telling them he was “going to the Ritz to see my favorite singer perform.” That was Turner, who was ultimately given another shot with Capitol. “It was because of David that I got another deal, and everything else followed. I’ll be ever thankful to him.”

 

10. “This Is Not America”
From: February 1985 Single

We were not necessarily intending for this list to include as many collaborations as it does, but that simply goes to show how adventurous of an attitude Bowie had while making music in the ’80s. Here’s another one in the form of the oft-overlooked “This Is Not America,” which Bowie recorded with the jazz guitarist and composer Pat Metheny. “Watching him do his vocal was something I will never forget,” Metheny said after Bowie’s passing in 2016. “I can only say that it was masterful — kind of like the feeling I have had whenever I have had the chance to be around a great jazz musician who carried a one-of-a-kind type presence that filled every note that came out of them. He was really fast. He asked if any of us could sing (we couldn’t/can’t!), so he did all the background vocals himself, kind of transforming into what seemed to be two or three different people as he did each part.”

 

11. “Dancing in the Street” With Mick Jagger
From: August 1985 Single

Lots of people have recorded covers of “Dancing in the Street.” Not many of them just happen to be two of the most charismatic performers in all of rock history. Bowie and Mick Jagger were originally going to perform the song at Live Aid with Jagger in Philadelphia and Bowie in London, but technical obstacles prevented that. Instead, they recorded it in a studio and made a music video for it in just 13 hours. Not only was their cover a chart hit, its proceeds went toward famine relief.

 

12. “Absolute Beginners”
From: March 1986 Single

Unfortunately, putting Bowie in your movie will not make it an automatic box office success, as Julien Temple learned with 1986’s Absolute Beginners, a film The New York Times described then as having “endless flair with no self-importance.” But it wasn’t all for naught. Temple had also asked Bowie to write some music for the movie, which resulted in three songs: “Volare,” “That’s Motivation” and “Absolute Beginners.” This last one is the star of the show, an outstanding example of Bowie’s knack for arrangement and melody writing.

 

13. “Magic Dance”
From: January 1987 Single

The same year Bowie appeared in Absolute Beginners, he also appeared in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, in which he portrayed Jareth, king of the goblins. Again, Bowie provided a handful of songs for the film, but arguably the most memorable of them is “Magic Dance.” At one point, Bowie tried getting his backing singer Diva Gray’s baby to make gurgling sounds at a microphone, but when that didn’t work, he simply made the baby sounds himself. You might call it silly or juvenile, we call it whimsical, mischievous and underrated.

 

14. “New York’s in Love”
From: Never Let Me Down (1987)

We realize that 1987’s Never Let Me Down isn’t usually the album people point to as being one of Bowie’s strongest releases, but we’d argue there’s a few gems from it that deserve recognition. One is “New York’s in Love,” another big-chorus type number that Bowie once said to Music & Sound Output (via bowiebible.com) was “a rather sarcastic song about New York.” Of course, five years later he and his wife Iman would buy their first home there and become residents up until Bowie’s death.

 

15. “Time Will Crawl”
From: Never Let Me Down (1987)

Don’t let the bright-sounding intro to “Time Will Crawl” fool you — this is a song addressing global pollution and general apocalyptic scenery. Bowie always seemed at least a little fascinated with the intersection between humanity, science and the fragility and chaos that can often be found there. Bowie was then inspired by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, but the theme remains relevant today.