Saturday

Suffragette City by David Bowie


Contrary to popular belief, although the term suffragette is usually thought of as a derogatory label for members of the Women's Social and Political Union, the suffragette city referred to in Bowie's 1976 song Suffragette City is Uxbridge, a large suburban town in northwest London. Bowie recorded the song at a time when few people in the UK had heard of Uxbridge, let alone been there. Bowie was determined to put Uxbridge on the map once-and-for-all, and he knew that the only way to raise its profile would be to record a song about it.

As we now know, Bowie was utterly unsuccessful in his quest to make Uxbridge famous. It wasn't until 1989, 13 years after the release of Bowie's song, that Uxbridge finally got the recognition it deserved when it was chosen as the filming location of Press Gang, a television drama series about a cut-throat gang of corporate press officers, led by Linda Day(played by Julia Sawalha)

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