The Man Who Sold the World (song):David Bowie

"The Man Who Sold the World" is a song written and performed by David Bowie. It is the title track of his third album, released in the U.S. in November 1970 and in the UK in April 1971. The song has been covered by a number of other artists, notably by Lulu in 1974, and Nirvana in 1993. The song was reworked by Bowie, featuring a heavy bassline, güiro as percussion and a notably darker mood, for performances in concerts between 1995 to 1997, including the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards. Bowie later returned to playing the original version in the 2000s.



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[hide]  *1 Inspiration and explanation  ==Inspiration and explanation[ edit] == The song's title is similar to that of Robert A. Heinlein's 1949 science fiction novella The Man Who Sold the Moon, with which Bowie was familiar.[1]  However, the song has no similarities to the story in the book. The persona in the song has an encounter with a kind of doppelgänger, as suggested in the second chorus where "I never lost control" is replaced with "We never lost control".[2]  Beyond this, the episode is unexplained: as James E. Perone wrote, Bowie encounters the title character, but it is not clear just what the phrase means, or exactly who this man is. … The main thing that the song does is to paint – however elusively – the title character as another example of the societal outcasts who populate the album.[3] In common with a number of tracks on the album, the song's themes have been compared to the horror-fantasy works of H. P. Lovecraft.[4]  The lyrics are also cited as reflecting Bowie's concerns with splintered or multiple personalities, and are believed to have been partially inspired by the poem "Antigonish" by William Hughes Mearns:[5] In the BBC Radio 1 special programme "ChangesNowBowie", broadcast on 8 January 1997, Bowie was interviewed by Marianne Hobbs and was asked about the song. Bowie commented: "I guess I wrote it because there was a part of myself that I was looking for. Maybe now that I feel more comfortable with the way that I live my life and my mental state (laughs) and my spiritual state whatever, maybe I feel there's some kind of unity now. That song for me always exemplified kind of how you feel when you're young, when you know that there's a piece of yourself that you haven't really put together yet. You have this great searching, this great need to find out who you really are."[6] ==Other releases<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == ==Cover versions<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == ===Lulu<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The song was covered by the Scottish singer Lulu in 1974, who, according to biographer David Buckley, performed it in "a sleazy, almost Berlin cabaretstyle".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[7]  Lulu would recall Bowie inviting her to a concert he gave after which he met her in his hotel room saying: "I want to make an MF of a record with you [because] you're a great singer." Lulu - "I didn't think it would happen but [Bowie] followed up two days later. He was übercool at the time and I just wanted to be led by him. I loved everything he did. I didn't think 'The Man Who Sold the World' was the greatest song for my voice, but it was such a strong song in itself. I had no idea what it was about. In the studio Bowie kept telling me to smoke more cigarettes, to give my voice a certain quality."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Bowie:_a_Biography_8-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[8]  Bowie produced the Lulu recording of "The Man Who Sold the World" with Mick Ronson during the Pin Ups sessions and also contributed guitar, saxophone and backing vocals. The remainder of the band included Ronson on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass, Mike Garson on piano, and Aynsley Dunbar on drums.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[9]
 * 2 Other releases
 * 3 Cover versions
 * 3.1 Lulu
 * 3.2 Richard Barone
 * 3.3 Nirvana
 * 3.4 Other covers
 * 4 References
 * 5 External links
 * "The Man Who Sold the World" appears as a B-side on the American single releases for the songs "Space Oddity" (1972) and "Life on Mars?" (1973). It also appears on various Bowie compilations.
 * Bowie performed the song live in 1979 with Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias on Saturday Night Live. A portion of this show is included in the film The Nomi Song.
 * A re-recorded version produced by Brian Eno appears as a B-side on the 1995 CD single for the song, "Strangers When We Meet". This version also appears on the bonus disc that followed some versions of Outside - Version 3.
 * A live version recorded at BBC Radio Theatre, London, on 27 June 2000 was released on the bonus disc accompanying the first releases of Bowie at the Beeb in 2000.
 * A November 2003 live performance from the A Reality Tour is featured on the A Reality Tour DVD, released in 2004, as well as the A Reality Tour album, released in 2010.
 * A portion of the song appears on the conclusion of Season Five, Episode Seven of the TV series Fringe. The episode is "Five-Twenty-Ten."

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Lulu's "The Man Who Sold the World" was released as a single on 11 January 1974 having been introduced by Lulu on the TOTP broadcast of 10 January 1974: the track only made its Top 50 debut (at #27) on the chart dated 16 January 1974 following a reprise performance by Lulu on 24 January 1974 TOTPbroadcast with a third TOTP performance by Lulu on 7 February 1974 broadcast facilitating a boost from No. 13 to No. 5 on the chart dated 9 February 1974. In her TOTP performances in support of "The Man Who Sold the World" Lulu has been characterized as "dressed and sounding exactly like a diminutive Bowie".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Who_Was_That_Man:_a_present_for_Mr_Oscar_Wilde_10-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]

===Richard Barone<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The song was covered by American singer Richard Barone in 1987 on his proto-Chamber Pop album, Cool Blue Halo. Using cello, acoustic guitar and symphonic percussion in a live setting. ===Nirvana<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">In his journals, Kurt Cobain of the American grunge band Nirvana ranked the album The Man Who Sold the World at number 45 in his top 50 favourite albums.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[14]  A live rendition of the song was recorded by the band in 1993 during their MTV Unplugged appearance, and it was released on their MTV Unplugged in New York album the following year. The song was also released as a promotional single for the album,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-15" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[15]  and received considerable airplay onalternative rock radio stations. It was also thrown into heavy rotation on music video stations such as MTV. Nirvana regularly covered the song during live sets after their memorable acoustic performance up until lead singer Cobain's death in 1994. In 2002 the song was re-released on Nirvana's "best of" compilation album Nirvana.
 * Lulu cover chart positions

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Bowie said of Nirvana's cover: "I was simply blown away when I found that Kurt Cobain liked my work, and have always wanted to talk to him about his reasons for covering The Man Who Sold the World" and that "it was a good straight forward rendition and sounded somehow very honest. It would have been nice to have worked with him, but just talking with him would have been real cool".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-16" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[16]  Bowie called Nirvana's cover "heartfelt," noting that "until this [cover], it hadn't occurred to me that I was part of America's musical landscape. I always felt my weight in Europe, but not [in the US]."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-17" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[17]  In the wake of its release, Bowie bemoaned the fact that when he performed the number himself he would encounter "kids that come up afterwards and say, 'It's cool you're doing a Nirvana song.' And I think, 'Fuck you, you little tosser!'"<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-18" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[18]

===Other covers<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] ===
 * Nirvana cover chart positions
 * Lea Laven as "Mies Joka Myi Maailman" on her album Niin (1974).
 * Midge Ure on the film soundtrack Party Party (1982). This version is also included on No Regrets: The Very Best of Midge Ure, and the compilations The David Bowie Songbook and Starman: Rare and Exclusive Versions of 18 Classic David Bowie Songs, CD premium from the March 2003 issue of Uncut magazine.
 * Here & Now on the album Fantasy Shift (1983).
 * Električni Orgazam on the album Les Chansones Populaires (1983).
 * Ed Kuepper on the album The Exotic Mail Order Moods of Ed Kuepper (1995).
 * Simple Minds on the covers album Neon Lights (2001).
 * 3 Melancholy Gypsys sampled the Nirvana version in their song "2010". which appears on the Living Legends album Legendary Music, Vol. 1.
 * Jordis Unga on Rock Star INXS, also released as a digital single.
 * Cocosuma on BowieMania: Mania, une collection obsessionelle de Beatrice Ardisson (2007).
 * Apoptygma Berzerk uses the guitar melody for a live rendition of the song Mourn, which can be heard on the album APBL2000 (2001).
 * Cross Canadian Ragweed have also covered the song on various occasions.
 * Meat Puppets have also covered this song.
 * John Cougar Mellencamp performed it as a bonus track on his album The Kid Inside (1983).
 * Mohsen Namjoo used the main riff on the song Morq-e Sheidâ.