During his lifetime, David Bowie managed to score Number One hits in two different genres: the sleazy glam of “Fame” reached the top in 1975, followed by the dance-pop of “Let’s Dance” eight years later. One thing he never attained, though, was a chart-topping country hit. But now, eight years after his death, Bowie can posthumously add the milestone to his discography.
Well, sort of.
This week, Chris Young’s “Young Love & Saturday Nights,” a country single first released in July 2023, reached Number One on the Country Aircheck/Mediabase country radio chart. It was no doubt helped by its familiarity: The track includes a recreation of the recognizable guitar riff in Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” as well as part of the melody line of the song, although the lyrics are no longer about a “hot tramp” but “good girls that can’t keep from falling for bad boys.” As a result, Bowie now has his first country Number One.
The single is the latest example of the ongoing interpolation trend, or classic songs that are legally incorporated into new ones to create Frankenstein-monster pop songs. If you’ve heard Olivia Rodrigo’s “Deja Vu” and thought it reminded you of Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” (or Jelly Roll and Dustin Lynch’s “Chevrolet” and the Dobie Gray classic “Drift Away”), you’re already up on interpolations.
In the case of “Young Love & Saturday Nights,” the merger is a result of Warner Chappell Music’s purchase of the Bowie song catalog in 2022, which allowed the major music publisher to use Bowie’s songs in any number of ways, including interpolations. Young’s song is credited to Bowie along with Nashville songwriters Ashley Gorley, Jesse Frasure, and Josh Thompson.
As Young told Rolling Stone last year, “There are a lot of songs where people use something as a sample or have exactly the same melody or lyric. This is different. This is creating something new, with a nod to something that pre-existed. And if you get the reference, it just made the song even cooler for you. Just to have a song that has David Bowie listed as a songwriter is amazing.”
Although pop had been dipping its toe into these waters for years, country has lately taken a serious plunge. In addition to the Young and Jelly Roll singles, Jake Owen’s “On the Boat Again” included parts of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again”; MacKenzie Carpenter’s “Country Girls (Just Wanna Have Fun)” borrowed from the Cyndi Lauper hit of a similar name; and Kane Brown’s “I Can Feel It” snuck in parts of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.”
Of them all, though, the Bowie usage remains the most ironic in light of his own tastes. In a 2002 interview with NPR, Bowie said, “I think the only music I didn’t listen to was country & western, and that holds to this day.”