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"The Man Who Sold the World" is a song written and performed by David Bowie. It is the title track of his third album, which was released in the U.S. in November 1970 and in the UK in April 1971. The song has been covered by a number of other artists, notably by Lulu, who had a UK No. 3 hit with her version in 1974, and Nirvana, whose 1993 performance of the song for the television program ''MTV Unplugged'' introduced it to a new audience. The song was reworked by Bowie, featuring a heavy bassline, güiro as percussion and a notably darker mood, for performances in concerts from 1995 to 1997, including the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards. Bowie later returned to playing the original version in the 2000s. ==Inspiration and explanation== The song's title is similar to that of Robert A. Heinlein's 1949 science fiction novella ''The Man Who Sold the Moon'', with which Bowie was familiar.〔King, Maureen, "Future Legends: David Bowie and Science Fiction", in ''The Man Who Sold the Moon'' is also the title of a collection of Heinlein's short stories. In 1975 Bowie told a reporter that he had acquired the film rights to another Heinlein novel, ''Stranger in a Strange Land'', and would write the score and star as the character Valentine Michael Smith (see ); since then, Bowie has said he had read the novel but never intended to make the film (see Campbell, Virginia, "Bowie at the Bijou", in ''Movieline'', April 1992, p. 35).〕 However, the song has no similarities to the story in the book. The persona in the song has an encounter with a kind of doppelgänger, as suggested in the second chorus where "I never lost control" is replaced with "We never lost control".〔King, Maureen, "Future Legends: David Bowie and Science Fiction", in 〕 Beyond this, the episode is unexplained: as James E. Perone wrote, In common with a number of tracks on the album, the song's themes have been compared to the horror-fantasy works of H. P. Lovecraft.〔Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981). ''Bowie: An Illustrated Record'': p. 38.〕 The lyrics are also cited as reflecting Bowie's concerns with splintered or multiple personalities, and are believed to have been partially inspired by the poem "Antigonish" by William Hughes Mearns:〔David Buckley (1999). ''Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story'': p.100; (Allmusic review ). allmusic.com. Retrieved 24 July 2010.〕 In the BBC Radio 1 special programme "ChangesNowBowie", broadcast on 8 January 1997, Bowie was interviewed by Mary Anne Hobbs and was asked about the song. Bowie commented: "I guess I wrote it because there was a part of myself that I was looking for. Maybe now that I feel more comfortable with the way that I live my life and my mental state (laughs) and my spiritual state whatever, maybe I feel there's some kind of unity now. That song for me always exemplified kind of how you feel when you're young, when you know that there's a piece of yourself that you haven't really put together yet. You have this great searching, this great need to find out who you really are." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Man Who Sold the World」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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