Even David Bowie Couldn't Handle This Song
David Bowie was a man who stared down artistic reinvention like it owed him money.
Glam rock, soul, industrial, Berlin-era surrealism—nothing was too weird, too dense, or too emotionally messy for him to dive into headfirst. Except, apparently, one song.
In a 2003 interview with Vanity Fair, Bowie was asked to name his favorite albums. Instead of picking anything obvious, he went straight for a 12-inch single—Robert Wyatt's haunting 1982 version of Shipbuilding, co-written by Elvis Costello.
"Not an album, a 12-inch single," Bowie admitted, bending the rules. "A vinyl nonetheless. A well-thought-through and relentlessly affecting song... Wyatt's interpretation is the definitive. Heartbreaking—reduces strong men to blubbering girlies."
This from the guy who once recorded a full album while so coked out he forgot making it.
Wyatt's Shipbuilding wasn't a commercial monster, but it hit a nerve. Originally released in 1982 and reissued in 1983, it peaked at number 35 in the UK. The song paints a portrait of working-class towns dependent on the shipbuilding industry—suddenly revived by the Falklands War. Jobs return, the economy perks up, and young men ship out to die. It's quiet devastation, dressed as a ballad.
Bowie may have been prepping Let's Dance at the time, but Wyatt was deep into his radical phase. A card-carrying member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, he spent the early '80s releasing pro-union anthems, revolutionary ballads, and even reworking Stalinist tunes on Rough Trade Records. Shipbuilding stands apart—political, yes, but soft-spoken, mournful, and painfully grounded in real-world consequence.
Hard numbers:
- Original release: 1982
- UK chart peak (re-release, 1983): #35
- Writer: Elvis Costello (music by Clive Langer)
- Performed by: Robert Wyatt
- Label: Rough Trade
The fact that this is the song that emotionally leveled Bowie tells you everything. This wasn't some avant-garde noise experiment or lyrical abstraction. This was a quiet lament about ordinary lives twisted by war, sung by a man who sounded like he actually lived them.
Bowie could play an alien, a Thin White Duke, a rock star possessed by Nietzsche—but Shipbuilding cracked through the act. Not many songs could do that.