“Aladdin Sane” by David Bowie

David Bowie gave the title track of his 1973 album Aladdin Sane a name that works as a pun and a warning at once. Say it out loud and it's "a lad insane", a nod to Terry, his half-brother, whose diagnosis was schizophrenia; an earlier version, "Love Aladdin Vein", was dropped partly because it smacked of drugs. The dates tacked on the end, 1913–1938–197?, mark the years before the two world wars, with the blank left for the third one Bowie believed was coming.

Arriving after the glam breakthrough of Ziggy Stardust, it pushed him out into stranger, more experimental territory, and biographer David Buckley calls it the album's pivotal song. Ken Scott produced, RCA released it, and the original vinyl signed it off with "RHMS Ellinis", the ship he wrote it on.

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