"The Buddha of Suburbia" is the theme song to the BBC TV series of the same name, released by

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...

in November 1993. It was re-recorded with Lenny Kravitz for Bowie's album, also titled '' The Buddha of Suburbia'', and inspired by his musical score for the series. The single reached No. 35 in the

UK singles chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

Background

One of the few tracks from the series that was actually retained unchanged for the album, its nostalgic lyrics were matched by a sound that was something of a pastiche of Bowie's past work, while retaining a fresh sound. Two places in the song there are references to older Bowie songs, the guitar break from "

Space Oddity "Space Oddity" is a song by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. It was first released on 11 July 1969 by Philips Records as a 7-inch single, then as the opening track of his second studio album ''David Bowie''. After the commercial f ...

" and the line "Zane, zane, zane, ouvre le chien" from " All the Madmen". Confusingly, several different versions of the song were released, some with no differentiation in title. Album track No. 1 ("Buddha of Suburbia") does not feature Lenny Kravitz. Album track No. 10 does feature him, but is not titled any differently from album track No. 1, although he is credited in the liner notes. CD single track No. 4 is labelled "Buddha of Suburbia (Rock Mix)", but it is the same as album track No. 10. Single track No. 1 is labelled just "Buddha of Suburbia" but does show "featuring Lenny Kravitz on guitar" in the credits. A careful comparison shows that this track is primarily the same as album track No. 1, but has the ending section of album track No. 10 (featuring Lenny Kravitz) instead of the original ending from album track No. 1. To add additional confusion, a couple of seconds of "noise" appear at the end of Track No. 1 on the album version. It doesn't appear on the end of the song on any of the single versions of it and the 2007 remaster/reissue of the album moves it to the beginning of Track No. 2 instead. This single was promoted by a video featuring Bowie performing the song while strolling around an English suburb, intercut with scenes from the series.

Controversy

The song caused minor controversies on both sides of the Atlantic, with Radio 1 making an airplay edit to cover up the word "bullshit" in the lyric, and US networks re-edited the video to remove shots where Bowie was smoking a cigarette.

Critical reception

Alan Jones from ''

Music Week ''Music Week'' is a trade publication for the UK record industry distributed via a website and a monthly print magazine. It is published by Future. History Founded in 1959 as '' Record Retailer'', it relaunched on 18 March 1972 as ''Music W ...

'' wrote, "The TV series is based in the Seventies, and Bowie's title song is evocative of both the period and his work from then. Its unusual lyrics may cause problems on radio, but it's still commercial and compelling."

Track listing

All tracks written by

7" vinyl single

* UK, Germany, Netherlands: Arista-BMG / 74321 17705 7

Cassette single

* UK, Germany, Netherlands: Arista-BMG / 74321 17705 4

CD single

* UK, Germany, Netherlands: Arista-BMG / 74321 17705 2

Collectors edition CD single

Collectors edition with a

holographic Holography is a technique that enables a wavefront to be recorded and later re-constructed. Holography is best known as a method of generating real three-dimensional images, but it also has a wide range of other applications. In principle, i ...

CD. * UK: Arista-BMG / 74321 18168 2

Personnel

– vocals, keyboards, guitar, synthesizers,

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...

, production * Lenny Kravitz – guitar on "The Buddha of Suburbia" *

Erdal Kızılçay Erdal Kızılçay (born c. 1950) is a multi-instrumentalist musician of Turkish birth. He has worked with, among others, David Bowie. He plays bass guitar, oud, drums, keyboards, trumpet and violin. He lives in Aegerten, Switzerland. Work with ...

– bass, drums, keyboards, percussion, trumpet * David Richards – production