‘’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore’’, the title of the single goes, but it is a fortune that David Bowie is behind the gimmick. The brand new track follows ”Sue (Or In a Season of Crime)”, which was most recently given a video by Tom Hingston and Jimmy King. ‘’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore’’ draws inspiration from the 1663 first published play by John Ford.
The five minute track has been perfectly described in David-Bowiemian terms by Andrew Male at Mojo.com: ‘’it is a raucous five-minute mesh of melody and discord, an art-rock anti-war romance, gasping under the pack-ice of no-wave sax-squawk’’. The single, which made its debut on BBC Radio 6, was written and recorded by Bowie in his home studio. The Kory Grow Rolling Stone article notices fans about Bowie’s live-long compilation, entitled Nothing Has Changed, which includes the artist’s creations pertaining to a half-a-decade career (including the latest single).
In the words of the master himself, ‘’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore’’ is a rock-piece with deep vortician influences: ‘’ If Vorticists wrote Rock Music it might have sounded like this’’. Vorticism is a British modern art form of the twentieth century, influenced by Cubism. The movement emerged in 1914 and was meant to encompass the disdain and suffering of the First World War, or to acknowledge its ‘’shocking rawness’’.
The intro of the song is truly a clash of drumming and saxophone, which gives the piece a scent of King Crimson. After you are drawn into that sound-suffocating atmosphere of the song, the voice of David Bowie seems almost soothing, yet bearing a tint of weeping color. The verses add even more to the smothering context:
‘’Man, she punched me like a dude
Hold your mad hands, I cried
‘Tis a pity she was a whore
‘Tis my curse, I suppose
That was patrol
That was patrol
This is the war.’’