“I'm Afraid of Americans” by David Bowie with Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor

"I'm Afraid of Americans" started life during the sessions for David Bowie's 1995 album Outside, and that first version landed on the Showgirls soundtrack. Bowie and Brian Eno wrote it, and Bowie tore it down and rebuilt it for Earthling, rewriting the words, stacking overdubs and shuffling the verses before Virgin issued it as a single in October 1997.

It's industrial rock with a sneer, a clattering maze of drum patterns, synths, loops and mangled vocals, and the song looks at America through the eyes of an everyman called Johnny. Trent Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails bandmates remixed it, one mix brought in Ice Cube, another came from Photek, and Reznor appeared in the video, which casts a scared European adrift in a city in America. It reached number 66 on the Hot 100, Bowie's last showing there until 2015.

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