David Bowie: I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday Highlight

"I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" (1993)

Today, I want to highlight one of my favourite Bowie songs that I like to listen to when I feel Low, but not in the mood to listen to it.  Instead, when I prefer a more uplifting message of hope, I like to listen to "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" from Black Tie White Noise (1993).  Of course, with anything related to Bowie, this piece is anything but a straight-forward song about not losing faith.  Instead, one of my favourite songs is, ironically, cover and a meta-spoof on his own songs, (proving, yet again, that before it was cool to be meta, Bowie did it first).

"I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" was released in 1992 by Morrissey, on his album Your Arsenal, which was produced by Bowie's former guitar player Mick Ronson from the Ziggy Stardust days.  As Pegg insightfully puts it, "[The song] echoes any number of Bowie's early 1970s ballads, [and] culminates in a blatant life from the climax of 'Rock'n'Roll Suicide'".  Indeed, it's hard not to hear the blatant influence of Bowie in Morrissey's version from both the sampling and the treacly, sentimental lyrics.

Though clearly, Bowie held no ill will about the spoof, as he later stated, "It occurred to me ... that [Morrisse] was possibly spoofing one of my earlier songs, and I thought, I'm not going to let him get away with that.  I do think he's one of the best lyricists in England, and an excellent songwriter, and I thought his song was an affectionate spoof."  In fact, Bowie went so far as to then go on to cover the song, although, as Pegg writes:

...in a characteristically perverse twist, [the climax of 'Rock'n'Roll Suicide'] is the one element Bowie chose to excise from his own version.  Instead, [Bowie] explained, "I thought it would be fun to take that song and do it the way I would have done it in 1974-ish."  The result is a breathtakingly overblown gospel treatment, complete with heavenly choir and big-band climax.  It's an endlessly incestuous joke: Bowie covers Morrissey parodying Ziggy Stardust in the style of Young Americans. 

[....] "There's something terribly affectionate about the idea of the lyric," said Bowie.  "You know, don't worry, somebody will come along if you wait long enough.  I mean, it's very weepy and silly, so I did it very grandly with a gospel choir and horns ... It's a bit silly, but it's done with affection."  

Above: The music video for "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday", which Pegg wrote was, "a mimed studio performance [...] recorded by David Mallet for the Black Tie White Noise video.  Bowie mimed the song alone before a set of curtains and Christmas lights, holding a cigarette lighter aloft, Barry Manilow-stype, in the pursuit of what [Bowie] described as 'a totally camp" cover version.'"

Yet despite the cheeky self-referential, meta, in-joke, there's still that "something terribly affectionate" which I think comes across wonderfully earnest in Bowie's rendition.  And, in fact, the joke merely adds rather than detracts from its lovely sentiments.

"I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" is one of my favourite uplifting pieces because the straight-forward message, if stripped down to the essentials, is still a good one to remember: to be patient, that someone still believes in you, to not lose faith.  And the light-hearted tone, the "spoof" part of the song (in both the original and cover version), only contributes to the song instead of detracting from it.  The message may be a serious piece of advice, but Bowie's delivery makes the audience feel like their worries are laughable just like his cheeky parody.  It's the brilliant combination of levity and gravitas in his performance that makes the song completely work.

Moreover, Bowie performing his version in an over-the-top gospel style is absolutely perfect for bending the lyrics to be interpreted as encouragement for keeping faith in the Lord, while at the same time the crooning love-ballad style of singing still keeps the original integrity of the song as one reassuring the audience to wait for a lover.  It's a perfect blend of the spiritual and sensual that only Bowie seems to be able to achieve.

And that's why Bowie's version of "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" is one of my favourite songs to listen to when I feel impatient for starting my career, for finding my significant other, for growing in my relationship with God, for creating a masterpiece, or any other numerous things that I want Now.  It encourages me to keep faith, that one day "it's gonna happen", but in the meantime, to take life a little less seriously.