DAVID BOWIE AND MICK JAGGER – "Dancing In The Street"

This is the one that nobody seemed to mind at the time, but years later they were ready to throw things at it. As you say, it may well have been because the video was a fun thing.

Oh, and don’t forget the filthy look Bowie gives Jagger towards the end (apparently Mick’s hair had hit him in the eye as they turned round at one point)

“Bullying” is the right word for this awful racket. It reminds me a little of Tina Turner’s caterwauling version of ‘Let’s Stay Together’ in the way it bludgeons a great song into the ground with it’s noisy histrionics.

I know it’s stupid to object too much to a quickie charity record but I hate the way it screams “Look! We’re having fun!” and expects you to join in when all you want to do is phone the police to get the old wankers to turn it down a bit.

Aw this was the first 7″ I ever commandeered my pocket money on, IIRC. I was seven. I wish I could remember what appealed to me at the time. I really wish I could.

I returned from my stint at a summer camp in Toledo and subsequent bus tour to assorted United States to find this clogging up the number 1 spot. I guess the instigators of this product selected Bowie and Jagger because of their appeal to a world wide audience – in particular the USA.
I seem to remember a history of backhanded compliments and bitchy remarks between the two singers and that Angie Bowie claimed that she had found the two of them in bed so the video is way more interesting as a duel for cool between the men than the record- a bit like a stop motion dinosaur fight from a Ray Harryhausen movie.

There’s a great video/film clip of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas singing the Nowhere to Run in a Detroit car assembly plant here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWl1JFZAjrI

Yeah, this is pretty terrible (particularly because the original “Dancing in the Streets” is still, 45 years on, a fantastic, hot record). However, I’ll take it over Jagger’s other duet from the same period, “State of Shock” with the Jacksons, which is something like anti-music in its pure awfulness.

All the Live Aid/Band Aid/Farm Aid business really seemed to revive the fossils. Suddenly the Who were reuniting, Crosby Stills Nash and Young were back, Pink Floyd was back, Steve Winwood was huge, Robbie Robertson made a pseudo-U2 record, George Harrison had hits again (and the Wilburys), even the “classic” Yes got back together. The late ’80s was something like the Indian summer for the Boomer-era musicians…

at the time i thought this was an awe inspiring pairing of TWO GIANTS OF ROCK come together to show the whippersnappers how it was done (i very much liked what most of the whippersnappers were up to, you understand, but i also JUST KNEW that they were of lesser importance than the big serious stuff that had gone on in the past. older brothers you see). i knew and loved the song already (that’ll be the “stardust” soundtrack mentioned on another thread) and so it was clear to me that dave and mick were only going to make the brilliant even more brilliant. and they sort of do, if by ‘more brilliant’ you mean “replacing the songs original qualities with barmy prancing, random bellowing, self parodic clowning and general buffoonery’. the absurd campy stella street sides of dave and mick are by far my favourite aspects of their characters and so, awful as this is by any accepted aesthetic standard, i can’t help finding it fairly enjoyable.

I’ll admit that the video does have some comedy value but as a song this is terrible. It has to rank as one of the least persuasive invitations to dance ever committed to record, completely failing as it does to convey the notion that the act might be any fun whatsoever. 2/10

This is, contrary to what was suggested before, not the kind of song that makes me want to stab my eardrums with the nearest pointy object. That would be unnecessary, as the song itself functions as a blunt weapon. Has there ever been a better fit for the word “heavy-handed”? Soulless shouting over a miserably joyless beat.

I don’t remember hearing the song before, and in fairness I don’t really have an opinion on Jagger or the Stones. But I would expect better from Bowie, even if he has had a tendency not to live up to my expectations for… quite a few years.

Also, I thought I’d take it on myself to keep a Sweden Watch (™) from here on, mainly for my own personal enjoyment. This one peaked at #4, with the top spot occupied by German Italo-disco singer Sandra’s (Cretu, nee Lauer) “(I’ll Never Be) Maria Magdalena” – which was a huge hit in continental Europe and Scandinavia, but just barely graced the UK chart at #91. The fact that the entire Italo thing never really caught on in Britain, with a few exceptions like Baltimora, is something that I’d like to see a proper explanation on. It seems there just might be something behind the idea that Britain isn’t “just another European country” anyway. 😉

If you also get the message that “This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions” here’s an alternative clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATw7HIJCuLY

Jesus God, a Jagger version of ‘Wet Dream’ with video of the aged Lothario enacting the lyrics with 19-year old supermodel. No! No! No! ‘Wet Nightmare’!

Re#18 – two other Italo-type hits that did OK in the UK, Taffy’s majestic I Love My Radio and Ryan Paris’ less-majestic Dolce Vita. I put our resistance down to a prejudice against ‘non English-language’ pop, certainly European music seemed to be regarding as slightly comical and not in the same league as that from the home of the Beatles (cue, sniggering references to Johnny Halliday and Plastique Bertrand). It took the tidal wave of dance records in the early 90s from Europe (at both ends of the spectrum of credibility) to start wearing us down.

1:10-1:20 in the video is weird to me because I don’t think I’ve ever seen David Bowie trying for “really actually enjoying himself” other than this.

#27 Tom Yes! – holding out’s video was like a live action Chris Achilleos picture from WD

The song (DITS) was just a pompous unloved event single – like food at some shoddy corporate buffet people ate it because it was there

This went straight in at number one, didn’t it? It was the first time I can remember that happening, and it felt to nine-year-old me like a historical event. Straight-in-at-number-ones had their own little section in my Guinness Book of Records. I remember poring over the names from ancient history – The Beatles, Slade, a big gap to the equally-ancient The Jam and Duran Duran. Frankie Goes To Hollywood also seemed as if from another time in the ‘biggest selling ever’ list opposite.

When this hit I thought it was great, that our age finally had its turn! I liked it and thought Bowie looked really cool, long coats being about everything I wanted out of life. But I never could, and still can’t, figure out why Jagger has to act so manic all the time. It’s only got more grotesque as time passes, ‘Shine A Light’ made at times very uncomfortable viewing.

Probably analogous to the UK charts, but 1985 was the year in the U.S. charts where dinosaurs from the previous decades crashed the party and embarrassed themselves and everyone around them, ruining a reputation for the 80s deemed unrepairable until, well, THIS decade!

This single was the signal.

Bowie seems to have invented ridiculous big-trouser dances five years before Mister Hammer. The hands in pockets at the top of the stairs wasn’t a good look.

As over-the-top as this was, it did at least have the saving grace of alerting those of us too young to remember it to the original. (“I Got You, Babe” had never really gone away, at least where the AM radio hits ‘n’ memories format was concerned.) But as the final number one for two once-great performers, this was a tawdry swansong. I’m relieved to learn that they considered it a one-off for Live Aid – if it had been, it might today have a kind of kitsch charm – but why did they agree to extend its life? Charity is all well and good, but when you’re a millionaire it’s got to be better to write a fat cheque than to don a silly costume and go out shaking a bucket. If you saw someone boogyin’ up to you in those outfits, you’d be dancing around them in the street. 3.

As I recall they only consented to finally release this as a single when it became clear there was a mounting demand for it. I think ‘Woo’ Gary Davies actually made a special announcement to that effect on his lunchtime show (I’ll confess I was euphoric – Bowie meant everything to me at that point). There was even a tacky tie-in poster mag to commemorate the release.

Utterly dreadful cover that really butchers and caterwauls over its original, whereas the awful ‘I got you Babe’ cover merely flattens its original: 1

(And here’s another version of that single that’s interesting in context.)

@#43 Koganbot. The audio on that first youtube clip is *amazing*. Just, wow. Beyond that, though, I don’t think anyone’s complaint here about DITS is age-ist, as such. It’s definitely hard to sustain a vital pop/rock career for multiple decades of course, but everyone here agrees that both Bowie and Jagger had plenty of life left in them at this point. This particular song just seems like a wretched mistake (madonna’s saturday night live appearance with lady gaga a few days ago struck me as a possibly analogous wretched mistake… lame and beneath her in something like the way that this song and vid was for two preternaturally cool/stylish guys).

As a Bowie fanatic at the time – the Berlin Bowie, the lad insane Bowie, the Bowie who drops Nietzche and Kafka quotes into his songs – this one really pained me back then. It was like the final cut in his hari-kiri artistic suicide. I still do think it represents the utter nadir of his musical career: ‘Tonight’ at least had a couple of halfway decent singles, and Never Let Me Down, despite being awful, is at least some sort of stab at originality. The difference between ‘Dancing’ and Bowie’s earlier superstars-having-fun-in-the-studio duo with Freddie Mercury is really quite striking.

16 years between ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ and ‘Dancing In The Street’ – Is this the longest gap between number ones that we’ve had in Popular?