"Scream Like a Baby" 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...

 that appears on the 1980 album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

Scary Monsters is an album by David Bowie, released in September 1980 by RCA Records. It was Bowie's final studio album for the label and his first following the so-called Berlin Trilogy of Low, "Heroes" and Lodger . Though considered significant in artistic terms, the trilogy had proved less...

.

Music and lyrics

The song focusses on a protagonist called Sam who is evidently being held, along with the track's narrator, in a political prison. Though set in the future, the story is related in the past tense, in a fashion Bowie has described as "future nostalgia... A past look at something that hasn't happened yet". Musically the song is noted for its "ultra-modern new wave guitar/synth sound", as well as for Bowie's use of varispeed

Pitch shift

Pitch shifting is a sound recording technique in which the original pitch of a sound is raised or lowered. Effects units that raise or lower pitch by a pre-designated musical interval are called "pitch shifters" or "pitch benders".-Pitch/time shifting:...

 vocals to illustrate Sam's downward spiral in the prison hospital – according to NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

critics Roy Carr

Roy Carr

Roy Carr is an English music journalist. He joined the New Musical Express in the late 1960s and has edited NME, VOX and Melody Maker magazines...

 and Charles Shaar Murray

Charles Shaar Murray

Charles Shaar Murray is an English music journalist. His first experience in journalism came 1970 when he was asked to contribute to the satirical magazine Oz...

, the effect is "as if the narrator of 'All the Madmen

All the Madmen (song)

"All the Madmen" is a song written by David Bowie in 1970 for the album The Man Who Sold the World, released later that year in the U.S. and in April 1971 in the UK...

' inhabited the world of '1984

1984 (song)

"1984" is a song by David Bowie, from his 1974 album Diamond Dogs. Written in late 1973, it was inspired by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and, like much of its parent album, originally intended for a never-produced stage musical based on the novel.-Music and lyrics:The centerpiece of Side...

'".

"Scream Like a Baby" was one of a number of tracks on Scary Monsters that evolved from pieces Bowie had written years before. It was originally composed in 1973, with different lyrics, as "I Am a Laser" for The Astronettes (Ava Cherry, Geoffrey MacCormack

Warren Peace

Warren Peace is a pseudonym for Geoffrey Alexander MacCormack , an English vocalist, composer and dancer best known for his work with David Bowie in the 1970s.-Musical career:...

 and Jason Guess). Bowie worked on an album for the group but it was eventually dropped, finally surfacing in 1995 as the Ava Cherry album People from Bad Homes; "I Am a Laser" was one of the tracks.

Other releases

• It was released as the B-side of the single "Fashion" in October 1980.