Only a Downstat
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"Only a Downstat" is a Tubeway Army song written circa 1979. Though recorded during the Replicas sessions in 1979 and displaying similar lyrical themes, musically the song is more in the style of the debut Tubeway Army album released in 1978, being primarily guitar-driven with an unpolished synthesizer line grafted on top.
The lyrics are about a person who has been judged a deviant for expressing emotion in a dystopian society ("A violator of the law of no feelings / They should be put in the chair"). The song's title is a Scientology reference[citation needed]: a 'downstat' is someone or something that causes a decrease in productivity[citation needed]. Songwriter Gary Numan would frequently use such odd neologisms from eclectic sources in his lyrics during this period. The title character is incarcerated in a prison of some sort where he awaits euthanasia ("the cure is always death") and proudly shows off the official badge of his stigma, a number 7. He writes letters and poetry to people who will never read them and who don't know or care that he is alive. This is a recurring theme in Numan's work, in which poets or lovers are outcasts inside a world where having feelings is considered a serious crime.
The track remained unreleased until Beggars Banquet, Numan's label from 1978-1983, issued a series of EPs in 1985 featuring previously unreleased recordings, companions to the 1984 release of an album's worth of early Tubeway Army demos known as The Plan. The track also appears on CD reissues of Replicas.
