ABSTRACT
Why did David Bowie create a very different single version of “Rebel Rebel” for his US audience when a single closely resembling the album version had already charted in the UK? Why did this version not become the breakthrough hit that he, his collaborators, and his management had hoped for? This misstep occurred after two years of Bowie’s dominating the UK singles charts like no one since the Beatles, and just a year before he would reach #1 on the US Billboard charts for the first time with “Fame.” Why, in between these two career milestones, was Bowie’s aim less than true? Based on historical and musical analysis, as well as interviews with some of the people involved with Bowie in 1974, this essay tells a story about the production, release, and marketing of different versions of “Rebel Rebel.” Listening to the US single release of the song, we learn about Bowie’s emerging engagement with US soul music, R&B, and what was then called “Latin soul,” about the rapidly shifting and racialized distinctions between AM and FM radio audiences and their formats, and about the equally racialized divergence between rock and other genres of popular music. Bowie’s efforts to negotiate the changing meanings of race, genre, and musical style in 1974 thus took place on shifting terrain that the essay aims to map.
