10 Most Underrated David Bowie Songs

10. Queen Bitch (1971)

The most famous song to be featured on the list, Queen Bitch is not one of the first tracks that Bowie aficionados would necessarily deem ‘underrated.’ However, despite not being one of his most iconic or ubiquitous offerings, Queen Bitch has cemented a legacy somewhere in the second tier of Bowie classics. Therefore, it is possible for the three-and-a-half minute rocker to have gone unnoticed by those who possess only an elementary knowledge of Bowie’s back catalogue.

Queen Bitch is located on the second side of Bowie’s iconic fourth album, Hunky Dory, home to three monster tracks in Life On Mars?, Changes and Oh! You Pretty Things. With such stellar company, it is unsurprising that Queen Bitch is often overlooked.

On an album that pays homage to some of his earliest and biggest influences, Queen Bitch is Bowie’s own personal tribute to The Velvet Underground. The main riff is often likened to The Velvet’s Sweet Jane, but is actually borrowed from Eddie Cochran’s Three Steps To Heaven.

In the track, Bowie portrays a character witnessing an encounter between two people, one believed to be the protagonist’s lover, while the other could be a prostitute. He grows ever more restless as the track progresses, lamenting their relationship with shouts of “It could have been me” and “Oh God, I could do better than that.”

It also foreshadows the glam rock period of Bowie’s career that would manifest itself in his follow up album, where Bowie embraces his Ziggy Stardust persona.