Teenage Wildlife (1999 Remastered Version)

How’s this for an understatement: David Bowie was a complicated guy. The chameleonic musician and all-around cultural icon, who died earlier this year, had a reputation for being disarmingly gracious and supportive, but could also be curt and mean. When Bowie didn’t like somebody, he let them know, though few people seem to have rubbed him the wrong way like Gary Numan did in the late 1970s. The new-wave pioneer owed a lot to Bowie’s experiments with sound and public image, as did many of the synth poppers who were coming up at the time—but instead of a nod of approval from the Thin White Duke, what they inspired was the sprawling, poison-pen “Teenage Wildlife,” which serves as the centerpiece of Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). The song’s lyrics are cutting (“Same old thing in brand new drag”), taking aim at Numan and his peers’ obsession with technology and repetition. But as a piece of music, it’s all about Bowie asserting his the scope of his creativity—a gorgeously textured song with the kind of elastic vocal performance that no one else could equal. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky