“To the last, I grapple with thee; from Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”
—Khan Noonian Singh

There’s a lot of speculation online about who the delectable poison kiss “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die” is directed at. Some people say Morrissey, but I find that hard to believe; would Bowie really expend so much time and effort on a “feud” that was now ancient history — on Morrissey, of all people? I always thought it might be Osama bin Laden, but I have no proof of that. It’s a futile exercise, innit, to try to figure out what David Bowie was thinking.

He certainly doesn’t pull any punches here. “I can see you as a corpse/hanging from a beam,” he says, then later:

Oblivion shall own you
Death alone shall love you
I hope you feel so lonely
You could die

At times “YFSLYCD” is so over-the-top vitriolic that it becomes a bit campy, spilling over into “Pug Nosed Face” territory. In fact the two are almost like two versions of the same song, one played for laughs, one delivered with a straight face.

The only video I could find for this song appears to be Russian. Is that allowed these days? (The Google seems to want it to be Bulgarian, and quite unhelpfully translated the first sentence as “Chtob’s pro-anasonic pro-anasir, prawn, ceded dig and slid, and all over the world.”)

In any case, it’s quite well done, a fitting accompaniment to one of the better songs of David’s latter years.