Little Wonder (David Bowie song)

"Little Wonder"
Single by David Bowie
from the album Earthling
Released27 January 1997
RecordedLooking Glass Studio, New York City 1996
Genre
Length
  • 3:40 (single version)
  • 6:02 (album version)
Label
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)
  • David Bowie
  • Reeves Gabrels
  • Mark Plati
David Bowie singles chronology
"Telling Lies"
(1996) 		"Little Wonder"
(1997) 		"Dead Man Walking"
(1997)
Music video
"Little Wonder" on YouTube

"Little Wonder" is a song by English musician David Bowie, released as the second single from his 21st album, Earthling (1997). "Little Wonder" backed by three remixes,[1] was issued on 27 January 1997.[2] The single was a success, peaking at number 14 in the UK and topping the chart in Japan.[3] The accompanying music video was directed by Floria Sigismondi and depicts Bowie at three different ages. Biographer David Buckley considers it a dance-oriented video rather than a rock one, reminiscent of Orbital's "The Box" (1996).[4]

"Little Wonder" was one of the first tracks Bowie and Reeves Gabrels wrote for the album.[5] Bowie called writing the track a "ridiculous" exercise in pure stream of consciousness: "I just picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and made a line for each of the dwarves' names. And that's the song [laughs]. And then I ran out of dwarves' names, so there's new dwarves in it like 'Stinky'."[6] Originally set to be a "nine-minute jungle electronic epic",[4] the song was trimmed to six minutes for the album.[3] Described by biographer Chris O'Leary as a combination of arena rock and electronica,[2] it utilises percussion and power chords from the Prodigy's "Firestarter", a 1996 UK number one that assisted in bringing drum and bass rhythms to the mainstream.[3]

  1. ^ Pegg 2016, p. 786.
  2. ^ a b O'Leary 2019, chap. 10.
  3. ^ a b c Pegg 2016, p. 166.
  4. ^ a b Buckley 2005, pp. 441–455.
  5. ^ Considine, J. D. (October 1997). "David Bowie: The FI Interview". Fi. pp. 36–41.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference RayGun97 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).