David Bowie covers tend, to my ear, to be inevitably less than the original. Except, for some bizarre reason, Lulu’s cover of “The Man Who Sold The World.” Of all the things. Part of it is down to Bowie and Ronson’s re-arrangement – they produced the Lulu version, and the rising guitar figure in the chorus is backgrounded and altered a little, and it generally shares a sonic space with Bowie and Ronson’s production of Lou Reed’s TRANSFORMER.

Lulu started out, of course, as a belter. Her contemporary was Maggie Bell, a classic blues rock belter. This one always amuses me, because you have to admire BA Robertson for even walking into a studio with a voice like that. I think they have her two feet away from the mic here so that she doesn’t make it explode.