Roxy Music

Brian Eno has said he bought The Velvet Underground & Nico for its drone and noise when almost nobody else did, and that its example — that pop music could carry avant-garde art-world ideas without apologizing for it — was "a big influence on Roxy Music," giving Eno and Ferry's art-school eclecticism a template for smuggling strange sounds into a pop song.

listen: upstream & heresource: Brian Eno on Roxy Music, the Velvet Underground and David Bowie — Louder ↗share

1967

HeroinThe Velvet Underground

→↓

1972

LadytronRoxy Music

listen forThe queasy, feedback-laced drone Lou Reed and John Cale build under "Heroin" as it lurches between tempos finds its pop-song equivalent in the woozy, synthesizer-warped textures Eno layers under "Ladytron" — both treat noise and dissonance as a legitimate part of the arrangement, not just an effect.

Ferry has said seeing Otis Redding tear through the Stax Revue as a teenager was "probably the main reason" he wanted to become a singer, and that soul showmanship — a voice built for dramatic, full-throated delivery rather than cool detachment — resurfaces whenever Roxy Music slows down into a torch song.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1966

Try a Little TendernessOtis Redding

→↓

1975

Love Is the DrugRoxy Music

listen forRedding's pleading, elastic phrasing on "Try a Little Tenderness" — building from a whisper to a full-throated shout — is the clear ancestor of Ferry's smoky, quivering vocal on "Love Is the Drug," a disco-inflected torch song built for exactly that kind of vocal drama.

Roxy Music emerged alongside David Bowie as fellow travelers in the early-1970s glam scene, sharing his interest in constructed personae, science-fiction glamour, and turning the pop single into a piece of theater — a kinship Bowie drew on directly a few years later when Brian Eno left Roxy to collaborate with him on the Berlin trilogy.

listen: upstream & heresource: Brian Eno on Roxy Music, the Velvet Underground and David Bowie — Louder ↗share

1969

Space OddityDavid Bowie

→↓

1972

Virginia PlainRoxy Music

listen forBowie's "Space Oddity" turns a simple folk-pop structure into a widescreen piece of theatrical science fiction; Roxy's debut single "Virginia Plain" does the same trick faster and stranger, cramming glam pulp imagery and an abrupt synthesizer freakout into two and a half minutes.