“All The Young Dudes” by David Bowie

"All the Young Dudes" is David Bowie's glam rallying cry, and the funny thing is he gave it away before he kept it. He wrote the song for Mott the Hoople after they turned down "Suffragette City", then produced the version they put out as a single on Columbia. Only later did he get round to cutting it himself.

So Bowie's own take comes with a peculiar charge: the author reclaiming a gift, singing the anthem he'd tailored for another band's voice after it had already become one of the flags glam rock marched under. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later counted the song among the ones that shaped rock and roll, and it's hard to argue with the swagger of the thing, whoever is singing it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.