Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

since “Loving the Alien” a decade earlier. Musically
essentially an attempt, largely successful, to create a
Pixies-style loud/quiet/loud anthem, lyrically it uses
absurdist, vulgar wit, à la early Dylan, to speak larger
truths (“Johnny looks up at the stars … Johnny wants
pussy and cars”) before concluding with ironic
jingoism, “God is an American.” With Kurt Cobain
dead, grunge over and England dictating American
culture, the timing of the track helps deepen the irony
in no small fashion.
The video features a malevolent Reznor
(ostensibly “Johnny”) pursuing a terrified and
goateed Bowie through the streets of New York City.
Directed by the then hip team Dom and Nic, it got
Bowie back in heavy rotation on MTV for the first
time in a decade as well. Despite strong sales
(relative to the nineties) and generally good reviews,
there were critics, and many fans, who did not take
to the new technology. “To this day I occasionally see
Earthling derided in the press as David’s ‘jungle’
record or ‘drum and bass experiment,’” Plati says.
“People are entitled to their opinions, but I do
disagree. It’s a Bowie record. The drum and bass
sound just went through the Bowie filter, like any
other Bowie album. When he coopted soul in the
seventies, he didn’t get that sort of grief—he was
rightfully called an innovator,” Plati continues,
unaware, of course, that there were thousands of
fans who were aghast that Bowie had “gone disco.”
Bowie, on the other hand, knew perfectly well that he
would get a similar level of flak from some. Post-