Songfacts®:

• David Bowie (from the Mail on Sunday June 29, 2008): "So it's late morning and I'm thinking: 'New song and a fresh approach. I know, I'm going to do a Ronnie Spector. Oh yes I am. Ersatz, just for one day.' And I did and here it is. Bless. I'm still enamored of this song and would give you two 'Modern Loves' for it any time. It's also one that I find fulfilling to sing onstage. It has some nice interesting sections to it that can trip you up, always a good kind of obstacle to contend with live. Ironically, the lyric is something about taking a short view of life, not looking too far ahead and not predicting the oncoming hard knocks. The lyric might have been a note to a younger brother or my own adolescent self."
• In the same Mail on Sunday interview Bowie referred to guitarists "the great Robert Fripp and my long-time friend Carlos Alomar" forming "a splintery little duel." While Fripp is best known for his membership of the progressive rock band King Crimson, Alomar is an American session guitarist who has played on more Bowie albums than any other musician. Among the Bowie songs he has played on are "Young Americans," "Fame" and "Boys Keep Swinging."
• David Bowie hated Gary Numan, a man who grew up idolizing the This White Duke. He slagged him off in the press and once had the synth-pop artist thrown off the set of Kenny Everett's TV Christmas Special. Bowie even took a potshot at Numan during this song.
  
  Same old thing in brand, new drag
  Comes sweeping into view, whoa, hoe, hoe, hoe, hoe, hoe
  As ugly as a teenage millionaire
  Pretending it's a whizz-kid world
  
  "It just seems really childish," Numan told Q magazine. "When he did that, I couldn't have given a f--k about him."