She Shook Me Cold

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"She Shook Me Cold" is a song written by David Bowie in 1971 for the album The Man Who Sold the World. At a time when Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were turning their heads to what would later become "hard rock" and "heavy metal" respectively, Mick Ronson's solo guitar work, particularly on "She Shook Me Cold", is as hard hitting as any to be found in 1970. The band was deliberately recorded to sound as "fat" as possible, to be able to play the song live without disappointing.

The lyrics are some of Bowie's most erotic yet, though, unlike The Width of a Circle, they this time concern a heterosexual encounter. On one hand, they manage to be ironically chauvinistic and, if read aloud without the musical backing, they seem rather simple and talentless. But with the musical background, and placed among the other tunes on the album, expressions such as "we met upon a hill" and "my dormant will" take on a deeper, mystical meaning, and other lines, such as "I'll give my love in vain, to reach that peak again" can be suspected of having other meanings, than just the sexual.