Look Back in Anger (song)

For other uses, see Look Back in Anger (disambiguation).

"Look Back in Anger"
Single by David Bowie
from the album Lodger
B-side"Repetition"
Released20 August 1979 (1979-08-20) (US)[1]
Recorded
  • September 1978
  • March 1979
Studio
Length3:08
LabelRCA
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)
David Bowie singles chronology
"Yassassin"
(1979) 		"Look Back in Anger"
(1979) 		"John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)"
(1979)
Music video
"Look Back In Anger" on YouTube

"Look Back in Anger" is a song written by English artists David Bowie and Brian Eno for the album Lodger (1979). It concerns "a tatty 'Angel of Death'",[2] and features a guitar solo by Carlos Alomar.

RCA Records was unsure if America was ready for the sexual androgyny of "Boys Keep Swinging",[3] the lead-off single from Lodger in most territories, and "Look Back in Anger" was issued instead.[4] The B-side was another track from Lodger called "Repetition", a story of domestic violence. The single failed to chart.

Beyond the shared title, the song has nothing to do with the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger. Bowie performed the song on his 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour (it is the opening number on the Serious Moonlight film) and reworked it in the mid-1990s as a heavy rock song for the Outside, Earthling, Heathen tours.

  1. ^ Draper, Jason (20 August 2024). "Look Back in Anger: The Unlikely Single that Would Point to David Bowie's Future". Dig!. Archived from the original on 20 August 2024. Retrieved 20 August 2024.
  2. ^ Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981). Bowie: An Illustrated Record: p.106
  3. ^ Nicholas Pegg (2000). The Complete David Bowie: p.43
  4. ^ Nicholas Pegg (2000). The Complete David Bowie: p.131