"Black Country Rock" is a song written by David Bowie

David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

 in 1970 for the album The Man Who Sold the World, released in November 1970 in the U.S. and April 1971 in the UK. An upbeat blues-rock

Blues-rock

Blues rock is a hybrid musical genre combining bluesy improvisations over the 12-bar blues and extended boogie jams with rock and roll styles. The core of the blues rock sound is created by the electric guitar, piano, bass guitar and drum kit, with the electric guitar usually amplified through a...

 number, it has been described as a "respite" from the musical and thematical heaviness of the remainder of the album. Its style has been compared to Marc Bolan

Marc Bolan

Marc Bolan was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist and poet. He is best known as the founder, frontman, lead singer & guitarist for T. Rex, but also a successful solo artist...

's contemporary Tyrannosaurus Rex

T. Rex (band)

T. Rex were a British rock band, formed in 1967 by singer/songwriter and guitarist Marc Bolan. The band formed as Tyrannosaurus Rex, releasing four folk albums under the name...

, down to Bowie's imitative vibrato

Vibrato

Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...

 in the final verse. According to producer Tony Visconti

Tony Visconti

Anthony Edward Visconti is an American record producer and sometimes a musician or singer.Since the late 1960s, he has worked with an array of performers; his lengthiest involvement with any artist is with David Bowie: intermittently from Bowie's 1969 album Space Oddity to 2003's Reality, Visconti...

, Bowie had the music ready by the start of the sessions but the words were a last-minute addition in the studio, the singer doing his Bolan impression "spontaneously ... because he ran out of lyrics ... we all thought it was cool, so it stayed."
The song appeared in the soundtrack of the film The Kids Are All Right

The Kids Are All Right (film)

The Kids Are All Right is a 2010 American comedy-drama film directed by Lisa Cholodenko and written by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg.One of Sundance 2010's breakout hits, it opened in limited release on July 9, 2010, expanding to more theaters on July 30, 2010. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray...

, released in 2010.

Other releases

• B-side of the single "Holy Holy
  Holy Holy
  "Holy Holy" is a song by David Bowie, originally released as a single in 1971. It was recorded shortly after the completion of The Man Who Sold the World, in the perceived absence of a clear single from that album. Like Bowie's two previous singles, it sold poorly and failed to chart.At the time...
  
  " in 1971.
• B-side of the Portuguese release of the single "Life on Mars?
  Life on Mars?
  "Life on Mars?" is a song by David Bowie first released in 1971 on the album Hunky Dory. The song—which BBC Radio 2 later called "a cross between a Broadway musical and a Salvador Dalí painting"—featured guest piano work by keyboardist Rick Wakeman. When released as a single in 1973,...
  
  " in 1973.
• The Japanese compilation Best of David Bowie in 1974.
• The Russian compilation Starman in 1989.
• The Sound and Vision box set in 1989.

Cover versions

• T. Tex Edwards and the Swingin' Cornflake Killers - Only Bowie (1995) and Up Against the Floor (1998)
• Claws of Paradise - Hero: The Main Man Records Tribute to David Bowie (2007)
• Big Drill Car
  Big Drill Car
  Big Drill Car was a pop punk/melodic hardcore group from Huntington Beach, California, who were active from the late 1980s to mid-1990s and briefly again in the mid-2000s...
  
  - No Worse for the Wear/Black Country Rock 7" (1994) and A Never Ending Endeavor (2009)