Scream Like a Baby
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| “Scream Like a Baby” | |||||
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| Song by David Bowie | |||||
| Album | Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) | ||||
| Released | September 12, 1980 | ||||
| Recorded | The Power Station, New York; Good Earth Studios, London February-April 1980 | ||||
| Genre | Rock, New Wave, Post-punk | ||||
| Length | 3:35 | ||||
| Label | RCA Records | ||||
| Writer | David Bowie | ||||
| Producer | David Bowie, Tony Visconti | ||||
| Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) track listing | |||||
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"Scream Like a Baby" is a song written by David Bowie that appears on the 1980 album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).
[edit] Music and lyrics
The song focusses on a protagonist called Sam who is evidently being held, along with the track's narrator, in a political prison. Though set in the future, the story is related in the past tense, in a fashion Bowie has described as "future nostalgia... A past look at something that hasn't happened yet".[1] Musically the song is noted for its "ultra-modern new wave guitar/synth sound",[1] as well as for Bowie's use of varispeed vocals to illustrate Sam's downward spiral in the prison hospital – according to NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray, the effect is "as if the narrator of 'All the Madmen' inhabited the world of '1984'".[2]
"Scream Like a Baby" was one of a number of tracks on Scary Monsters that evolved from pieces Bowie had written years before. It was originally composed in 1973, with different lyrics, as "I Am a Laser" for The Astronettes (Ava Cherry, Geoffrey MacCormack and Jason Guess).[3] Bowie worked on an album for the group but it was eventually dropped, finally surfacing in 1995 as the Ava Cherry album People from Bad Homes; "I Am a Laser" was one of the tracks.
[edit] Other releases
- It was released as the B-side of the single "Fashion" in October 1980.
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Nicholas Pegg (2000). The Complete David Bowie: p.181
- ^ Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981). Bowie: An Illustrated Record: p.113
- ^ David Buckley (1999). Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story: p.207
