10 Perfect Songs That Had To Wait Years To Become Hits

If David Bowie had stuck with his original profession in the music business, chances are we might not have gotten the sounds of Space Oddity at all. Around the same time that the Starman was working on his first solo tunes, he was also hard at work cowriting songs for different companies, throwing different lyrics together from music that was already provided for him. He may not have been the answer to Bob Dylan by any stretch, but stealing a song from under his nose led to Bowie seeking a little bit of revenge.

After being given an old French song to adapt lyrics for, David originally wrote the single Even a Fool Learns to Love, which he even acknowledges was pretty poorly written at the time. Once he heard the song blaring all over the radio rewritten as Frank Sinatra's My Way, David wanted to dream bigger, and used his old song to do it. Having already started the campy nature of Hunky Dory, Life on Mars? was the turning point for the project, quoting the chord progression of his old song and directly taking the melody different places, as he sang about being a bit of a misfit in the world.

Although the sales of Hunky Dory didn't light the world on fire at first, Life on Mars? would become known as one of the first classic songs of Bowie's glam era, being a warmup for what was to come on Ziggy Stardust just one album later. Whether or not Sinatra got the message is lost to history, but David was at least a little bit cagey for the back cover of the record, thanking Frankie for inspiring one of his greatest songs.