#RAWTHOUGHTS 11.7.25- Looking at my Replay 2025, part 1

I picked two songs at random from my Replay 2025 playlist on Apple Music that I didn’t already talk about on here. These are just RAW THOUGHTS I have about them.

Stay by David Bowie

-This is the second to last song off of Station to Station, which runs neck and neck with Low for my favorite Bowie album. They’re 1a and 1b for me. I haven’t chosen which is which because I can’t. It really depends on the day. I can talk about, I don’t know, how much I liked Nala Sinephro’s score for Smashing Machine or break down my thoughts on the dissonance between weebs and their tastes versus the actual influences of their preferred series(which I probably will once I get around to talking about Thundercat’s Evangelion) but those two albums are my default listening choice at this time in my life. I don’t know what to listen to I just put on Station to Station. Back when I was doing the Spotify free trial scam the first album I downloaded on each account was Low. Even when I tried out Deezer and Tidal my first album was always Low.

Besides the years of footage we have of one Macho Man Randy Savage and the Mobb Deep album Hell on Earth, Station to Station is probably the greatest thing cocaine has ever produced. If you had a spectrum of cocaine excellence you would have whatever nonsense Peter Thiel is trying to do with racist e girls in Downtown Manhattan on one end and on the other end you would have Station To Station. It’s so good people overlook that David Bowie did so much coke that he started to flirt with fascism, at least as part of a new persona for the rollout. To put it in a modern perspective, imagine if Kanye were doing all this Hitler stuff while he was making Yeezus instead of Vultures.

Funnily enough, you don’t see much of that on the album. Despite the Roman salute he did at reporters and despite the persona of the Thin White Duke, Station to Station is very much a continuation of what he was doing on Young Americans. You still hear a lot of the Philly Soul(best American music ever by the way) influence but you start to hear a little bit of that krautrock sound that would become more prominent on Low and Heroes. I suppose because both Station to Station and Low had songs that were meant for The Man Who Fell To Earth there’s going to be some thematic similarities.

So Stay...

The phrase David Bowie used to describe Young Americans was “plastic soul”. It was obviously inspired by soul and funk records but there was an inauthenticity to it, which he readily acknowledged. No matter how much he admired that sound he was honest about the fact that he wouldn’t be able to do it justice and that he was embracing it to get over in America.

He still got his first Number One hit over here off of Fame so...

Even though plastic soul refers to his strenuous efforts to emulate the popular Black music of 1974, Stay is the platonic ideal of the term. It feels plastic in its very soul. Everything about it just reeks of insincerity.

That’s why I love it.

First off those riffs. Gotdamn. Carlos Alomar killed that shit.

Kinda hate how his name is Alomar because whenever I see the name Alomar I always think baseball. You know, Roberto Alomar, Sandy Alomar Jr.

I completely believe David Bowie when he talks about how much coke they used during the production of that album. How else do you come up with those licks and bass lines? That drum work? That frenetic energy? Just amazing, genius level guitar work there. Like at the end it’s almost providing backup vocals.

The song itself... the vocals are completely the opposite. There is not an ounce of sincerity in them at all. Bowie sounds drained and pathetic, like he’s at the end of the cocaine bender that preceded the jam session that fueled the song.

R&B has always been about pleading. Either your man is trifling or you’re trying to get your girl back after being trifling or you’re trying to bag someone’s girl or something in between the three. In this realm there’s always a sense of longing and yearning that permeates.

Stay doesn’t have that. It pleads and begs but its energy is off. You can tell by the tone in someone’s voice that they’re “begging for the pussy” for lack of a better phrase. There’s a certain sincerity that shines through whatever game they’re trying to play. Bowie sounds just as desperate but there’s no real longing there.

He wants someone but someone to stay with him as he comes down or someone to do coke with him so that he doesn’t feel like as much of a mess or even just someone in general. Anyone, really. There’s no specificity. You don’t always hear a name mentioned in traditional soul or R&B but you get the sense that they’re pouring their hearts out to someone in particular. This isn’t that at all. This is someone grasping at straws trying to get anyone to spend the night with him, even if it’s just to make sure he doesn’t die. There’s almost a brutal honesty in that despite the lack of conviction or sincerity in his voice.

The Thin White Duke is a man who cannot love, he can only simulate a performance of it. I guess sometimes you wonder the same about other people or even yourself. Can you truly be loved? You think you love people and show them that you love them but how much of that is real and how much of that is just wishful thinking or obligation?

The inability for the Duke to bridge the gap with this mysterious second person is the central insecurity that drives this song. He just knows he needs someone or something. The person he’s looking for is almost superfluous outside of their presence. Do you feel whole knowing that someone, anyone is there to listen to you or be with you? Or does their presence just further emphasize the hollowness you feel inside? Is this all just simulacra that isn’t even really for your benefit?

It’s unfortunate how hollow that character is as a person. The journey from how hopeful he was on Young Americans to the husk on Station to Station. Kind of relatable, though. Life does have a way of hollowing you out from time to time, dehumanizing you in a way that’s all too human. Afterwards you’re left with not the desire for love but the desire to love. To be able to pick up the shattered pieces and shape them into something resembling the person you think you are. Or who you want to be.

Frontin-Pharrell

Lately I’ve been listening to this a lot. Partially because of nostalgia for that sound. Partially for structural reasons, as in literally how the song was constructed. I’m listening to this so much because it’s a perfect song.

Whatever *gestures emptily at this pile of words hosted on a technocratic right wing platform* is, ultimately this is going to lead to some sort of quasi-serious music project. Lowkey this is one of those art projects where the process is a big part of the final product. I usually dislike projects and pieces like that. I guess I’m a hypocrite but that’s how life works sometimes. So one of the things I’ve gotten into over the past year is listening to songs I love over and over again to see what makes them work. That’s actually why I wrote about Earth the Oldest Computer and Passionfruit in the first place.

This is what led me to the “binge listen to old Neptunes songs” phase I’m currently in. Right now besides Frontin I’m stuck on Girls Dem Sugar. Like again just a perfect song, even Beenie Man saying that she’s his favorite because she’s choosy and that’s why he doesn’t itch.

The main thing I’m concerned with at the moment is bridges. I’m good at making cool electronic sounds and arranging them in a way that sounds interesting or intriguing but I want to get good at bridges specifically. Just to provide contrast between verses, which I’m also very concerned with. Song structure in general has fallen by the wayside, hasn’t it?

Frontin is simple yet brilliant. Basic story, they meet in the first verse, she questions things in the second verse, there’s “whoa-oh-oh”ing over the bridge/interlude, then he comes clean and says his nose is open on the third verse, then some more “whoa-oh”ing and maybe an “owwwww” thrown in. Kind of a standard pop song blueprint but in the words of Grand Admiral Thrawn as he bled out in the cockpit of his Star Destroyer, it was so artistically done.

Sorry for talking about Star Wars while talking about Star Trak. That’s like wearing Adidas socks with Nikes, which people started doing consciously a while back, which I never got.

What I appreciate the most about this song is how it plays with contrast. The main chord is pretty simple, just three notes played in two keys. Pharrell on the other hand has a somewhat intricate flow on his verses and even the prechorus to some extent. The chorus is pretty traditional, first stanza ending with “I was just frontin, you know I want you babe” and the second with “but you know I want ya, you should stop frontin babe”(bringing everything back around) but on the verses he’s kind of doing melodic rapping. Not full on sixteen bar verses like Future would eventually do in the 2010s but you do see a bit of interior rhyme with “I don’t want to sound full of myself or rude/But you ain’t lookin at no other dudes” that plays interestingly against the background of those three notes.

The bridge... so the verses are kinda standard upbeat sounding Triton preset Neptunes fare. Then you get this kind of lush, jazzy interlude and you’re like “Oh business is about to pick up”. You know what it reminds me of actually?

A while back, Sisqo did an interview with... GQ? where he talks about all of the disparate sonic elements that made The Thong Song work. I remember him mentioning the Star Wars theme and the Flight of the Bumblebee and I’ll be damned if I don’t hear bits and pieces of them in The Thong Song. The bridge for Frontin is kind of like like but for Bonita Applebum by A Tribe Called Quest? At least to me.

But you have these bouncy synths and then all of a sudden there’s this soft seductive part. Even the bass gets sexier here. Just in terms of craft it’s great. You hear that “You should stop frontin babe” and then it comes in like “Oh Pharrell ain’t playin around!”

Jay’s verse is cool. He said he was Denzelin then explained he was acting.

Thanks Hov. Gotdamnyamanhov. He did it again!

I just remember him in the video looking mad out of place at a house party with a skate ramp wearing an Orchard Street tee. This was one of the first instances of Awkward Hov, one of my favorite pre social media memes.

The wash comes for us all.

I chose these both at random but it’s interesting how much both songs are built off of contrast. Stay is more energetic but Bowie sounds lethargic and pathetic whereas on Frontin, the music is more laid back but Pharrell is jazz dancing all over the beat. Frontin does play into that thing I said above about specificity but maybe I just remember Lanisha Cole from the video.

To be fair though…

I’d be singing falsettos to her too, not gonna lie.

Might do more of these, might not. Inspiration is a variable.