Released as the lead single from his 1999 album, ‘hours…’, Thursday’s Child set the tone for what would arguably be David Bowie’s most contemplative album up until his final release, 2016’s Blackstar. But though Bowie himself would discourage listeners from interpreting ‘hours…’ as a personal reckoning with mortality, songs such as Thursday’s Child all but demanded that both fans and artist stopped to consider the distance they’d come together in the 30 years since Bowie first gained major recognition, with his breakthrough single, Space Oddity.
“All of my life I’ve tried so hard/Doing the best with what I had,” Bowie sang at the song’s opening. Yet despite the overtones of despondency, Thursday’s Child was proof that Bowie still had what it took to create profoundly affecting art.
Listen to the best of David Bowie here.
The backstory: “I hesitate to say it’s autobiographical”
After jumping feet first into the pop mainstream in the 80s, Bowie made some of the most challenging music of his career throughout the 90s, exploring everything from electronica-based soundtrack work (The Buddha Of Suburbia, 1993) to multimedia world-building (1. Outside, 1995) and full-tilt drum’n’bass (Earthling, 1997). As the cover to ‘hours…’ made plain, his final record of the decade would put that period to rest, as the then 52-year-old Bowie – pictured cradling his Earthling-era self on the album’s sleeve – turned his thoughts towards ageing.
And yet, he was adamant that ‘hours…’ stood apart from the facts of his own life. “It’s a more personal piece, but I hesitate to say it’s autobiographical,” he told Uncut magazine. “The progenitor of this piece is obviously a man who is fairly disillusioned. He’s not a happy man. Whereas I am an incredibly happy man! So what I was trying to do, more than anything else, was capture some of the angst and feelings of… guys of my age. I’d say, broadly, it’s songs for my generation.”
The recording: “The simpler I played, the better it was”
Given that Thursday’s Child was one of seven ‘hours…’ songs used, in alternate form, in the soundtrack that Bowie and guitarist Reeves Gabrels had recorded for a new supernatural-themed computer game, Omikron: The Nomad Soul, it was clear that Bowie was happy blurring the edges of reality. And yet, during a BowieNet web chat in April 1999, he promised fans that they would be “surprised at the intimacy of” the music he had been recording, at Seaview Studio, in Bermuda, throughout the early months of the year.
One of the last songs to be written for ‘hours…’, Thursday’s Child was, like much of the rest of the album, built on pre-programmed drums and layered synths played by Bowie and Gabrels, with Mark Plati adding bass and drummer Mike Levesque recording live drums on top, in a style that seemed counterintuitive to the way most percussionists were asked to interact with their electronic counterparts. “The drum machine provides the swing and the acoustic drums provide the rock,” Levesque later told Uncut, speaking of the way Thursday’s Child came together. “The simpler I played, the better it was.”
