Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (song)

"Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)"
Single by David Bowie
from the album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
B-side	"Because You're Young"
Released	2 January 1981 (1981-01-02)
Recorded	February–April 1980
Studio	Power Station, New York City Good Earth, London
Genre	Post-punk[1]
Length	5:10 (album version) 3:27 (single version)
Label	RCA
Songwriter(s)	David Bowie
Producer(s)	David Bowie Tony Visconti
David Bowie singles chronology
"Fashion" (1980) "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" (1981) "Up the Hill Backwards" (1981)

"Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" is a song by the English singer-songwriter David Bowie, released as the title track of his 1980 album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). It was also issued as the third single from that album in January 1981. Coming as it did in the wake of two earlier singles from Scary Monsters, "Ashes to Ashes" in August 1980 and "Fashion" in October the same year, NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray labelled its release another instance "in the fine old tradition of milking albums for as much as they could possibly be worth".^[2] The song was subsequently performed on a number of Bowie tours.

Musically the track was notable for its lead guitar work by Robert Fripp and distinctive synthesized percussion. The lyrics, sung by Bowie in his Cockney accent, charted a woman's withdrawal from the world and descent into madness ("When I looked in her eyes they were blue but nobody home ... Now she's stupid in the street and she can't socialise"). Thematically the song has been compared to Joy Division's "She's Lost Control" (1979),^[2] and to the "claustrophobic romance" of Iggy Pop's 1977 collaborations with Bowie, The Idiot and Lust for Life.^[3]

The edited single reached No. 20 in the UK charts. As well as 7" vinyl, it was issued in Compact Cassette format.