Five years after "Rebel Rebel" saw David Bowie wave goodbye to his gender-bending glam persona of old, 1979's "Boys Keep Swinging" exploded out of the Lodger album with a wild celebration of sexual ambiguity, set to a frantic musical soundtrack that was as clearly indebted to the then-prevalent new wave scene as it was to Bowie himself.
An immediate Top Ten single in the U.K., "Boys Keep Swinging" is one of Bowie's most simplistically effective constructions. Anxious to capture the sound of boys indeed swinging, he instructed his band members to swap instruments for the song. And so, with drummer Dennis Davis on bass, guitarist Carlos Alomar on percussion, and so on, "Boys Keep Swinging" erupts with an almost amateurish enthusiasm, clattering and clonking to delirious effect.
Bowie gave the song its first live airing on Saturday Night Live in early 1979. However, it has only been featured during one tour, 1995's Outside.
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