“China Girl” by Iggy Pop

"China Girl" first surfaced on The Idiot, Iggy Pop's 1977 debut as a solo artist, and it was built the way the whole album was: David Bowie wrote the music, and Iggy made up the words on the spot, standing at the microphone. The two had written it in 1976, and Pop drew it from an affair he'd had with a Vietnamese woman.

It's a love song that curdles as it goes, the narrator pining after his Asian girlfriend until he realizes that the Western baggage he carries is spoiling her. Bowie produced it, plays alto sax, guitar, piano, synthesizer and toy piano, and sings backup, with Phil Palmer on guitar, Laurent Thibault on bass and Michel Santangeli on drums. Put out as a single that May, it never touched the charts.

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