Thursday’s Child

In the studio

The ‘hours…’ album was begun at Seaview Studios in Bermuda in the spring of 1999, and continued at New York’s Looking Glass Studios and Chung King Studios.

Bowie had originally wanted TLC to sing backing vocals on ‘Thursday’s Child’, but was dissuaded by Gabrels.

That’s completely true. We got Holly Palmer, who was a friend of mine, an amazing singer that I knew from Boston. She had gone to Berklee like I had, and she was one of those singers whose voice was an instrument. You could give her sheet music and she would sing it.

When he told me he wanted TLC, I was like, ‘TLC? I stopped listening to you when you sang with Bing Crosby! I was so pissed off I didn’t buy your next two albums! Now we’ve acquired the audience that we wanted, and you’re gonna put TLC on the record, and they’re going to say, ‘F— him!’ And I know better singers than that!’

So I called Holly and put her on speakerphone, and David asked her to sing [TLC’s] ‘Waterfalls’. And she did and then he said, ‘OK, now do it without vibrato.’ And she did. And then he said, ‘OK, now do it with more vibrato.’ And she did. And he says, ‘Can you come to the studio right now?’ And she did, and she ended up singing on ‘Thursday’s Child’, and was in what became the next touring band.

Holly Palmer was not, however, the second choice for the song. Mark Plati’s young daughter was invited to sing in the studio, but refused to do so.

As far as the backing vocals are concerned, David had the idea of a child singing the ‘Monday, Tuesday’ part, so we asked my six-year-old daughter Alice to come in and do it. However, Alice wanted no part of it. She said she’d rather sing with her friends than with grown-ups. So we called Holly and she auditioned for David over the speakerphone, with him giving her some direction, like ‘more vibrato, less vibrato’. In a couple of hours she joined us on Varick Street and cut the backing vocals. Alice later had misgivings about turning down the session once she saw Holly performing with us on Storytellers and Saturday Night Live. After all, she could have been on tour with Dad!

‘Thursday’s Child’ contained a mixture of live drums by Mike Levesque and programmed beats.

That was one of the first ones, if not the first one we cut, where the drum machine provides the swing and the acoustic drums provide the rock. I can remember doing takes where I was maybe adding to the swing and the nuance of the drum machine. The simpler I played, the better it was. You can hear it on the track.

One thing you don’t know as a drummer is, ‘How much of this loop shit are they going to keep?’ So we had to ask those questions and Mark and David were like, ‘No, this is going through the song.’ So then I’m like, ‘OK, let me get out of the way, but turn me up.’

The release

Thursday’s Child was released as a single on 20 September 1999, two weeks before the ‘hours…’ album. In the UK it peaked at number 16 in its first week.

Thursday's Child is one of the last songs we wrote for Hours. Chosen by DB as the first single. #TimsTwitterListeningParty #bowiehourswithreeves

— reeves gabrels (@reevesgabrels) September 4, 2020

Two international CD singles were released. CD 1 contained the radio edit, Rock mix, and ‘We Shall Go To Town’, while CD 2 contained just the radio edit and Rock mix.

In the UK there were two different CD singles. The first contained a 4:25 edit of ‘Thursday’s Child’, plus the non-album songs ‘We All Go Through’ and ‘No One Calls’. The second contained ‘Thursday’s Child’ (Rock mix), ‘We Shall Go To Town’, ‘1917’, and the ‘Thursday’s Child’ video in QuickTime format. However, some copies of the second disc played the CD1 tracks, and became collectors items.

The video for ‘Thursday’s Child’ was by Walter Stern, who also directed the shoot for ‘Survive’.

The video is a strange and slow moving piece that wanders between a present and a past in a bewildering fashion.

‘Thursday’s Child’ was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance in 2001, but lost out to ‘Again’ by Lenny Kravitz.

The radio edit and Omikron: The Nomad Soul version of ‘Thursday’s Child’ were included on Re:Call 5, part of the 2021 box set Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001).

Live performances

David Bowie performed ‘Thursday’s Child’ throughout the brief Hours Tour in 1999, and on a number of television shows in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden.

The song was performed just once in 2000, at the Roseland Ballroom in New York on 16 June.

The ‘Survive’ single, released in January 2000, contained a live version of ‘Thursday’s Child’ recorded at the Paris Elysée Montmartre on 13 October 1999. The full show was released in 2020 as Something In The Air (Live Paris 99).

Live recordings from 23 August and 19 November 1999 respectively can be heard on the live albums VH1 Storytellers and At The Kit Kat Klub (Live New York 99).

A performance from 23 August 1999 for BBC TV’s Top Of The Pops, recorded on the same day as the VH1 Storytellers appearance, was released on the digital EP Live From The Manhattan Center ’99 in September 2024.