Diamond Dogs

The searing, vicious title track to the album of the same name, "Diamond Dogs" finds David Bowie creating a rip into vacuous party/celebrity lifestyles that takes Aladdin Sane's "The Cracked Actor" to an even higher, smarter level. The introduction alone isn't merely one of Bowie's best but one of rock's best moments ever. Over a fake audience cheer, he shouts by way of announcement, "This ain't rock and roll...this is...GENOCIDE!" It's a shocking, effective start, a perfect lead-in to the glammy, Stonesy riff of the track. Bowie performs the guitars himself and does so just fine in the then-recent absence of Mick Ronson, a good sign. Meanwhile, the beginning of the lyric is even more bitterly hilarious -- "As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent/You asked for the latest party." His singing is sassy, less high-pitched than his Ziggy days, and meets the steady rocking groove of the song head-on and fits it perfectly. Tony Visconti's co-production with Bowie unsurprisingly nails it, as so much of their work together did, at once upfront and oddly distanced. Check out the hollow percussion hits leading up to the chorus or the heavily flanged guitar kept low but audible in the mix, not to mention the equally distorted vocals here and there.