“Jump They Say” by David Bowie

"Jump They Say" led the way for Black Tie White Noise, David Bowie's 18th album, as the first single Arista put out from it in 1993, and it cut close to the bone. Bowie wrote it about his feelings for his half-brother Terry Burns, who had schizophrenia and died by suicide in 1985, and the words draw loosely on their relationship and on Bowie's memories of him.

None of that turns it into a dirge. Nile Rodgers produced it and plays guitar, and his touch tilts the track toward funk, with a streak of contemporary jazz running through it: Bowie blows the saxophone himself, and avant-jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie tears off a solo. Mark Romanek's video went into heavy rotation on MTV Europe, and though Bowie never toured the album, the song came back on his Outside Tour in 1995-96.

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