Why Is David Bowie Singing Nirvana's Song?

Beautiful song, such simple yet unclear lyrics. The Man Who Sold the World was released on November 4, 1970. I tried to understand its meaning, but figuring out what it's actually about turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Some sources claim that this was a difficult album for David Bowie to make; he struggled to focus long enough to finish it.

There are two particularly puzzling phrases in the song: “We passed upon the stair” and “With the man who sold the world.”

I considered various interpretations. Why a staircase? There doesn't seem to be any obvious symbolism in English that could point me toward a particular meaning. So perhaps it's something simple. If there are stairs, someone must be going up (presumably). High? Given Bowie's history of drug use, I wondered whether that might be the meaning.

But the real problem is the second phrase.

I imagined several possibilities, including Judas Iscariot. But Bowie wasn't particularly religious, so why would he care that much about those events? Maybe the man sold his soul? But that doesn't quite fit either. There's no buyer mentioned, so perhaps the transaction itself isn't important.

Then I wondered whether the song was about losing oneself, perhaps betraying one's own ambitions. For example, could it be about Bowie's transition from being single to becoming a married man? Could he be speaking to himself at different stages of his life?

But that seemed a little too complicated, and there wasn't enough evidence in the lyrics to support it.

So I looked for interviews in which Bowie might have explained the song's meaning. But, of course, he seemed to be hiding something, talking about mysticism instead. Lame.

At the time, his wife was Angie Bowie. Their relationship doesn't appear to have been particularly passionate in the conventional romantic sense, and they were apparently quite open about that. But that's their business.

What caught my attention was something Angie Bowie said in an interview on February 7, 1993:

“In ‘The Man Who Sold the World,’ you see his concern about inheriting the insanity that was part of his family background.”

Now, that's interesting.

Suddenly, I remembered the title of a movie starring Jack Nicholson: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's a title that indirectly evokes a psychiatric hospital.

And then it struck me.

Who is the man who sold the world?

He isn't selling anything in particular. Nobody is buying anything. Yet somehow, he's selling the entire world.

Who would do something like that?

An insane man.

And suddenly, the chorus started making sense to me.

“I never lost control,” followed by “You're face to face / With the man who sold the world.”

Perhaps Bowie is looking at his alter ego, or confronting the mental illness he fears inheriting.

Then the narrator goes searching for his identity, but he doesn't find it. He seems to be losing his mind: “I gazed a gazely stare.”

And now he feels as though he has died. He has lost control.

Then comes the chorus again: “We never lost control.”

Notice the change from I to we.

Perhaps he has now reached the same state as the man he encountered earlier. They are no longer separate individuals. They are both the man who sold the world. They are both insane now.

Thanks to David Bowie for this allegory.

But there's another interesting twist.

Nirvana's tribute to the song seems to close the cycle while adding another layer of meaning.

In Nirvana's version, the first chorus begins with “We never lost control,” rather than Bowie's “I never lost control.”

I like to think that Kurt Cobain is expressing solidarity with Bowie here, as though he's joining him in that shared experience.

But then Nirvana switches to “I never lost control,” reversing Bowie's original progression.

It's an interesting turnaround. Cobain seems to enter the state Bowie described, only to emerge as an individual again, before the final chorus returns to “we.”

And so the cycle closes, perhaps only to begin again.