The Ideal David Bowie Song?

Okay, get this.  Nick Troop, the Principal Lecturer in Health Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, wrote what he considers to be the ideal David Bowie song.  He used an program called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to analyze the words and emotional processes in the lyrics of the songs on Bowie’s most commercially successful albums.  Then, he fed them through a randomizer program, a thing that Bowie has done himself many times throughout his career, and developed the ‘ideal’ Bowie song.  Interesting, no?  Okay, maybe not to some but I am fascinated.  My background is in psychology and this is the type of stuff that I spend many hours pondering, except I don’t get paid for doing so like like Dr. Troop does.  His findings were….interesting.  And totally not what I expected.  He says, “I found that the songs with positive emotion and social processes were more successful than the songs that talked about mortality.”  Given that the character of Ziggy Stardust was obsessed with his own mortality and dramatic demise, I didn’t expect for Dr. Troop to find that positivity is the emotion that makes David Bowie albums sell like there is no tomorrow.

The title of Dr. Troop’s ‘ideal’ Bowie song is “Team, Meet Girls; Girls, Meet Team.”  It rolls off the tongue like “Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola” does but that is where the similarities end, given the subject matter.

Is it good?  Hm, I don’t know if that is the point of the song.  But it is intriguing.  And, you can’t deny the fact that Dr. Troop knows his Bowie.  Respect.


Comments

One response to “The Ideal David Bowie Song?”

  1. Latetotheshow Avatar
    Latetotheshow

    This is a piece of alt. crap, I’m sorry. It’s not even especially Bowie-esque.

    The fallacy may be the assumption that Mr. Bowie’s most popular records are his ‘best’. And it completely ignores the musical element, and anyone with even the least familiarity with his writing process knows that Mr. Bowie generally comes up with the lyrics last.

    Mr. Bowie may not write ’em like ‘Ziggy’ anymore, but this is a total wank. Sadly, the New Bowie Product Problem remains unsolved. We can but hope this jars him into action before the robots take over.