"Modern Love" Дэвида Боуи: История песни и признание критики

1983 song by David Bowie
the David Bowie song

"Modern Love" is a song written by the English singer songwriter David Bowie. It was released as the opening track on his 1983 album Let's Dance and issued as the third single from the album later in the year. Co produced by Bowie and Nile Rodgers of the American band Chic, it is a rock song that contains elements of new wave music. It was recorded at the Power Station in Manhattan and was one of the first tracks recorded for the album. It was performed by Bowie on the Serious Moonlight Tour, where it often closed the shows. A music video for the song, directed by Jim Yukich and featuring a performance of the song during the tour, was released in 1983 and played frequently on MTV. Since its release, "Modern Love" has received critical acclaim from music critics, who praised Bowie's songwriting, its production, and its power as an opening track. It is generally considered one of the best songs on Let's Dance, along with "China Girl" and the title track, and has since been called one of Bowie's greatest songs. The single release was a commercial success, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart and number 14 on the US Billboard Hot 100. "Modern Love" has appeared on various compilation albums and was remastered for the 2018 box set Loving the Alien (1983–1988).

After its title track, "Modern Love" was the second song Bowie recorded in December 1982 at the Power Station (formerly Avatar Studios) in Manhattan, New York City. It was co produced by Nile Rodgers of the American disco band Chic, who had originally hoped to make a "very noncommercial, avant garde album" with Bowie. Following the recording of the title track and "Modern Love", however, Bowie asked Rodgers to "make [a] great commercial record ". By the time "Modern Love" was issued as a single, Bowie's Serious Moonlight Tour was underway.

The song's music video used footage of Bowie and his band performing the song during a concert on the Serious Moonlight Tour. It was directed by Jim Yukich who, according to Kyle Ryan of The A. V. Club, "captured what looks like Bowie and his band re emerging for an encore during a four night stand at Philadelphia's Spectrum theater. The look of Bowie and band presages the swing revival that would follow a decade later." He continued:

blockquote|This trio of songs offers some of the most daring songwriting of Bowie's career. The lyrics are so simple they risk simple mindedness, yet I'd give a hundred 'Space Oddity's for the elegant cliché twisting at the climax of 'Modern Love': 'Modern love gets me to the church on time/Church on time terrifies me.' As a rock statement about growing up and facing commitments, that couplet beats the hell out of Jackson Browne. In his retrospective review of the Let's Dance album, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic praised the song as an opening track, writing, "[the album] comes tearing out of the gate, propulsed [sic] by the skittering 'Modern Love'." He calls it, along with "China Girl" and the title track, a "catchy, accessible song that has just enough of an alien edge to make [it] distinctive". AllMusic writer Dave Thompson described the song as a "high energy, effervescent rocker", writing, "it epitomizes all that was good about Bowie's 1983 reinvention as a willing superstar." While he believed that the song's production had started to sound dated in subsequent decades, it is "nevertheless a furiously punchy number, redolent of an old time rocker". Ryan concluded his review saying, "[the song] sounds both modern and timeless." The song was remastered, along with the entire Let's Dance album, for the 2018 box set Loving the Alien (1983–1988); the shorter single version and live versions recorded in 1983 and 1987 are also included. Biffy Clyro covered "Modern Love" in February 2018 for The Howard Stern Tribute to David Bowie, which was hosted by Tony Visconti. Following Bowie's death in 2016, "Modern Love" was named as one of Bowie's greatest songs by numerous publications. Rolling Stone listed it as one of Bowie's 30 essential songs, writing "[the song] reveals Bowie at his catchiest and most nihilistic." Ultimate Classic Rock, in their list of Bowie's 10 greatest songs, listed it at number eight, labeling it the best "pop song" of Bowie's career, praising its spoken intro and its "infectious chorus". The publication also named it the artist's 13th best single. In 2018, the writers of NME listed "Modern Love" as Bowie's eighth greatest song. They noted the "tragic irony" to the track, in that it is not about how Bowie managed to "make a perfect song about his cynicism at the world", but rather that his "prescient observations" of the 1980s music industry exposed the "hollowness" of his 1980s works.