10 Greatest David Bowie Songs
6. Stay
Recorded at the height of his extreme drug use and coinciding with his Thin White Duke era, Stay is a perfect reflection of the character he was inhabiting at the time. The lyrics are full of emptiness, hopelessness and desperation. The most telling lyric has to be "Maybe I'll take something to help me/ Hope someone takes after me". This is one of the most overt allusions to his drug use during this phase of his career. If he's going down the downward spiral, he's taking others with him as well.
In some respects this song is like the dark twisted cousin of Let's Dance. It's funky, the instrumentation is thick and layered just like Let's Dance except the lyrics are anything but fun.
Almost counterintuitively Stay and Station to Station, the album this song comes from, is some of Bowie's most accessible but dark works. Nonetheless it came out at a crucial time where he began to experiment with sounds not typically associated with his previous work. And it made for one of his best albums and very best songs.