“Fashion” by David Bowie

"Fashion" was the last song finished for Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), David Bowie's 14th studio album, and it had come a long way from where it started: a reggae parody called "Jamaica". Bowie and Tony Visconti co-produced it between February and April 1980, working in New York and London, and by the end it had turned into a stiff-legged, sharp-elbowed dance-floor strut.

The band is lethal. Dennis Davis and George Murray lock the groove down tight, Carlos Alomar chops at the rhythm, Andy Clark's Minimoog buzzes around the edges, and King Crimson's Robert Fripp slices through the whole thing with a lead guitar that sounds like it's being fed through a mangle. Bowie, meanwhile, has it both ways: the song revels in the latest trends while sneering at the style police who demand everyone fall into line, painting them as fascists and thugs.

David Mallet's video plays the same game, casting Bowie and his musicians as street toughs and cutting them against dancers in rehearsal and a procession of New Romantics. RCA put out an edited version as the album's second single on 24 October 1980, and it went to 5 in the UK and 70 on the Hot 100. Like "Ashes to Ashes", it won the critics over, and it has kept turning up on lists of Bowie's best.

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