“Golden Years” by David Bowie

"Golden Years" arrived from RCA on 21 November 1975, the lead single off David Bowie's Station to Station and the first track finished for the album. Bowie had part of it written before he started filming The Man Who Fell to Earth and pieced the rest together in the studio, co-producing with Harry Maslin at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles that September. He later admitted he could barely remember making the record.

You'd never know it from the groove. This is the funk of "Fame" dragged over gravel, funk and disco with a harsher, grinding edge, Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick scratching away over George Murray's bass and Dennis Davis's drums, with old-school doo-wop moves tucked into the arrangement. The narrator promises his girl a limousine, shelter from the world outside and a brighter tomorrow. Critics and biographers have kept it near the top of his catalogue ever since.

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