When China Girl became a hit for David Bowie in 1983, it was hardly a new composition. Bowie had actually recorded the song several years earlier with Iggy Pop, turning a song born from their turbulent lives in Berlin into one of the most recognizable tracks of his commercial peak.
The song was written by David Bowie and Iggy Pop and first appeared on Pop's 1977 album The Idiot. Bowie later revisited it for his hugely successful album Let's Dance, with the new version produced by Nile Rodgers. Released as a single on May 31, 1983, as the second single from the album.
Bowie's recording has a distinctly different character from the original. Nile Rodgers gave it a sleek, polished funk-rock arrangement, while guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan supplied the striking guitar work. The combination of Bowie's detached vocal delivery, the rhythmic groove and Vaughan's expressive guitar helped turn the song into a sophisticated piece of mainstream 1980s pop-rock.
Beneath that glossy surface, however, China Girl carries considerably darker themes. The song emerged partly from Iggy Pop's relationship with Vietnamese artist Kuelan Nguyen and reflects ideas involving obsession, cultural identity, alienation and the uneasy dynamics between Western and Asian cultures. Bowie later acknowledged the song's more complex implications, while the video deliberately played with imagery associated with interracial desire and Western perceptions of Asian women.
Commercially, Bowie's version was a substantial success. It reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart on June 18, 1983 and No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 27, 1983, becoming one of the most successful singles from Let's Dance. The album itself represented a dramatic commercial breakthrough for Bowie, selling millions of copies worldwide.
The accompanying music video, directed by David Mallet, became an important part of the song's identity. Bowie appears in several scenes with New Zealand model Geeling Ng, including imagery inspired by the famous 1955 film From Here to Eternity. The video's sensuality and its portrayal of interracial romance generated discussion while contributing to the song's visibility on the emerging MTV generation.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of China Girl is its journey. A song created in the experimental atmosphere surrounding Bowie and Iggy Pop's Berlin period was transformed six years later into a polished international pop hit. The two versions reveal just how dramatically a song can change when placed in a different artistic and commercial context.
China Girl is a perfect example of David Bowie's ability to reinvent existing material. What began as an intimate and experimental collaboration with Iggy Pop became, in Bowie's hands and with Nile Rodgers' production, an impeccably polished 1980s hit. The transformation is remarkable—and so is the fact that beneath the commercial sheen, the song retained the complicated subject matter of its original conception.
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