“Diamond Dogs” by David Bowie

"Diamond Dogs" is the title track of David Bowie's 1974 album and the doorway into its ruined world: the song introduces Halloween Jack, Bowie's newest alter ego, holed up on the roof of an abandoned skyscraper in a Manhattan after the end of everything. The music turns its back on glitter. The guitars lean hard on the Rolling Stones with a Stooges-style proto-punk sneer, Bowie plays guitar, keyboards and sax himself alongside Alan Parker, and Herbie Flowers' bass, the drums of Aynsley Dunbar and Tony Newman, and Mike Garson's piano, harpsichord, Mellotron and Moog pile on the grime. Bowie produced and arranged it and mixed it with Keith Harwood.

As a single it was an odd pick, and NME's Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray judged it too long and too bleak to be a hit. It stalled at 21 in the UK and never got a US release, yet it became a centerpiece of his 1974 North American tour.

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