My Top 1000 Songs #954: Lust For Life

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

This one's admittedly hard to enjoy as just a simple song these days, inevitably conjuring up its associations with everything from Trainspotting (where the song's disjointed drug and degradation references make sense) to cruise ship commercials (where they make--maybe--less sense?). Still, it's tough not to still get a little rush out of the title track from Iggy Pop's second post-Stooges solo album, like the first (both arriving in 1977) a close collaboration with David Bowie. (And it's yet another reminder that Bowie was so on fire throughout the 70s that he could write the music for something like "Lust For Life" and simply say, hey, why don't you take this one...)

A lot of that thrill emanates from the unforgettable beat, of course--courtesy of drummer Hunt Sales (who'd later rejoin Bowie as part of Tin Machine), arguably borrowed from Motown tracks like The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love," later repurposed on songs like Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"). But the delivery is also peak Iggy, one of the songs where he came closest to a more mainstream sensibility without losing his unique sense of danger.

Live in the 2010s:

Bluegrass version from Bad Livers:

Kay Hanley cover, from some random soundtrack: