Scream Like a Baby

"Scream Like a Baby" is a song written by David Bowie. It appears on the 1980 album Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps).

"Scream Like a Baby"
Song by David Bowie
from the album Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
ReleasedSeptember 12, 1980
RecordedThe Power Station, New York, February 1980; Good Earth, London, April 1980
GenrePost-punk
Length3:35
LabelRCA
Songwriter(s)David Bowie
Producer(s)David Bowie, Tony Visconti

Music and lyrics

The song focuses on a protagonist called Sam who is evidently being held, along with the track's narrator, in a political prison. Though set in the future, the story is related in the past tense, in a fashion Bowie has described as "future nostalgia... A past look at something that hasn't happened yet".[1] Musically the song is noted for its "ultra-modern new wave guitar/synth sound",[1] as well as for Bowie's use of varispeed vocals to illustrate Sam's downward spiral in the prison hospital – according to NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray, the effect is "as if the narrator of 'All the Madmen' inhabited the world of '1984'".[2]

"Scream Like a Baby" was one of several tracks on Scary Monsters that evolved from pieces Bowie had written years before. It was originally composed in 1973, with different lyrics, as "I Am a Laser" for The Astronettes (Ava Cherry, Geoffrey MacCormack and Jason Guess).[3] Bowie worked on an album for the group but it was eventually dropped, finally surfacing in 1995 as the Ava Cherry album People from Bad Homes; "I Am a Laser" was one of the tracks.[4]

Bowie intended to play the song during his 1987 Glass Spider Tour, but dropped the song from the set list before the tour started.[5]

Other releases
  • It was released as the B-side of the single "Fashion" in October 1980.

Personnel

Notes
  1. Nicholas Pegg (2000). The Complete David Bowie: p.181
  2. Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981). Bowie: An Illustrated Record: p.113
  3. David Buckley (1999). Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story: p.207
  4. O’Leary, Chris. "Pushing ahead of the dame".
  5. Currie, David (1987), David Bowie: Glass Idol (1st ed.), London and Margate, England: Omnibus Press, ISBN 0-7119-1182-7


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