Bananarama’s Unreleased 1993 Cover Of David Bowie’s “Changes” Has Leaked, And It’s Guilty-Pleasure Gold

Robbie Daw | January 12, 2016 5:29 pm
Editorial: Farewell To David Bowie
Our take on the loss of pop and rock's one-of-a-kind, unrivaled chameleon.

There is plenty of online content full of grief over the too-soon passing of David Bowie to be found, so how about we lighten things up a bit this afternoon?

One of the more interesting pop curiosities of the 1990s was the fact that, sometime early in the decade, Bananarama — then reduced from a trio to the duo of Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward — recorded a cover of David Bowie‘s rebellious pop-rock staple “Changes.” The UK girl group were in the process of putting together their sixth studio album Please Yourself with producers Mike Stock and Pete Waterman, themselves also pared down to a duo once Matt Aitken departed the ’80s hit factory known as Stock Aitken Waterman. (All involved had landed two global smashes with the chart-topping “Venus” in 1986 and, a year later, “I Heard A Rumour.”)

For whatever reason, “Changes” never made the cut for Please Yourself upon the LP’s spring 1993 release. But, as these things go, David Bowie sadly passed away over the weekend, and lo and behold — Bananarama’s long-shelved cover has made its way online.

Regardless of what you ever thought of SAW’s work on the early material from folks like Kylie Minogue and Rick Astley, it’s hard to escape that fact that it’s aged far better than a decent share of the overall pop output from that time period.

As to whether or not the world really needed a Bananarama cover of “Changes,” well, perhaps it remained unreleased for a reason. That said, this isn’t nearly as bad as it might look on paper. And we just might be on our fifth listen of it in the past half hour…

Thoughts on Bananarama’s long dormant Bowie cover? Let us know below, or by hitting us up on Facebook and Twitter!