How David Bowie, long thought ambivalent to country music, became a writer on a Chris Young song

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nation star Chris Younger’s newest single, “Younger Love & Saturday Nights,” is a vivid love letter to summertime weekends, outdated vans, dive bar bands, and crushes. And it’d sound instantly acquainted: The guitar lick that opens the observe is lifted instantly from David Bowie’s 1974 hit “Insurgent Insurgent.”

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Bowie is credited posthumously as a songwriter on the observe, making it one of many genre-melding icon’s few forays into nation music — noteworthy, as a result of Bowie himself was not fairly a fan of the style.

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“I believe the one music I didn’t take heed to was nation and western, and that holds to this present day,” Bowie informed NPR’s Terry Gross in 2002. “It’s a lot simpler for me to say that, the form of music I didn’t take heed to was just about that.”

So how did Bowie, who died in 2016, find yourself on the observe?

Warner Chappell Music turned the custodian of Bowie’s musical legacy — buying the worldwide rights to over 400 of his songs, together with “Insurgent Insurgent” — when the corporate bought his intensive music catalog in 2022.

Ben Vaughn, president and chief government officer of Warner Chappell Music Nashville, says his staff requested songwriter Jesse Frasure to “get artistic utilizing parts from Bowie’s catalog to put in writing a brand new nation track. He ended up doing an interpolation of ‘Insurgent Insurgent’ and the demo he turned in was an on the spot smash.”

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“Getting the decision from Bowie’s property and Warner Chappell to creatively discover his catalog was an thrilling day,” Frasure mentioned in a press release. “Interpolations to me are a manner of tipping a hat to my heroes and possibly even introducing their music to a brand new viewers.”

He added that it’s an honor to have Bowie’s music “be heard within the nation style.”

WMC A&R government Spencer Nohe then pitched the track to Younger’s staff whereas their authorized counsel, Steve Butler, negotiated the deal.

Younger writes a lot of his personal songs, however when he first heard the demo written by Ashley Gorley, Josh Thompson and Frasure, he knew he wished to file it.

“It tackles common themes that lots of people can associated to. That’s the top purpose of the track: to make you’re feeling such as you’re in it,” Younger informed The Related Press. “And the truth that David Bowie’s catalog obtained picked up and so they determined to do one thing particular like this, and listing him as a songwriter on the track, is a very cool factor.”

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However how would Bowie himself really feel in regards to the posthumous collaboration?

“Hate is a robust phrase,” mentioned Tiffany Naiman, UCLA’s director of music business packages and an professional on Bowie, of the icon’s emotions towards the style. “I believe he had a really troublesome relationship with sure components of America together with nation music.”

It may need not been his factor, she mentioned, however that didn’t imply he by no means listened to nation music. She urges listeners to contemplate Bowie’s documented love of Elvis Presley, who started his profession as a rustic star, and Bowie’s cowl of the nation observe “It Ain’t Straightforward” by Ron Davis, recorded throughout his 1971 “Hunky Dory” periods and launched on 1972’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”

Younger himself informed the AP that he doesn’t assume his track is “introducing David Bowie to a brand new style.”

Bowie won’t have leaned into nation music, Younger says, however “in the event you requested nation followers, ‘Hey, are you aware who David Bowie is?’ they’re going to call a track. And even when they don’t, they’re going to acknowledge the burden of the title.”

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