According to the album’s liner notes, David Bowie played the piano on this track and one other, while Rick Wakeman handled the rest of the record’s piano duties.

He's contrasting regular humans (Homo Sapiens) against these new, more advanced arrivals to the planet (Homo Superior). Some people think he was talking about aliens but in interviews Bowie has suggested that he was talking about the new generation of kids (which was GenX) who will be more advanced than the Baby Boomers.

Yeah, spot on with Rick Wakeman from Yes. Great reaction guys... definitely should be a whole album listen.

"pretty things" are the anti-establishment youth of the era

LOVE OLDER BOWIE!! SO FREAKIN' GOOD!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥Hope you-guys enjoy him as much as I DO!! RIP, David...you are deeply missed!!

Stripped down is right. How can anyone conceive a masterpiece from such simple stuff?

Hope you get to the hard stuff. You should be listening to "The Bewley Brothers" and "Quicksand", even "Andy Warhol". Hunky Dory is amongst his best work.

Oh hell yeah! Hey if you guys really want to bug out react to Moonage Daydream live from the Ziggy Stardust movie circa 1973. Mind-bending guitar solo by Mick Ronson will melt your faces!!!

I grew up listening to this stuff - still rings with a joy and wonder that is, sadly, missing today...

Great vid guys. But you kind of missed the bus on the 'homo' words. He's not singing about coming out, but about how we (modern humans = homo sapiens) should make way for the next level of human (homo superior). The claps (and the double voice backing vocals) were one of his trademarks. Check out how he used them to perfection on Lou Reed's Satellite of Love.

70s bowie the best bowie!! His music, creativeness, just amazing!!! Wonderfull sound!!

Bowie is it. All his song are so different yet so catchy, it doesn’t matter. Iconic gets tossed around, but he is it.

Homo superior is a play on Homo sapiens which are mentioned earlier.

What an album!

One of the best vocals by Bowie is the song Wild Is The Wind a cover of the song by Nina Simone. The video for the song is really good too. Hope you get around to seeing it sometime. 😎

I have got to hear your reactions to the David Bowie-produced Mott the Hoople songs "Sweet Jane" (written by Lou Reed) and "All the Young Dudes" (written by David himself) off the "All the Young Dudes" album. David's production, backing vox et cetera are stellar as are the songs themselves.

My favourite Bowie album, you’ve got to do the whole thing !!!

This is a peculiarly fantastic album. I’m not sure how much of it works well in the realm of single track reactions, but as a whole, or two or three tracks back to back, it has undeniable magic. As you could tell…this track melds into the next. Glad to hear your reaction to any part of it.

Simply put.................a musical genius ! That's it ..............that's all. :)

Homo Superior is a concept from a 1935 scifi novel by Olaf Stapledon called 'Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest', which is itself partially based on the work of Frederick Nietschze, who originated the idea of the "ubermensch" or superman, a class of humans intellectually superior to most people, who therefore are not subject to the same morality as the rest of the human race. Bowie had already done a song called "The Supermen" on his previous album The Man Who Sold The World. Some of Nietschze's work was used by the Nazis to justify their worldview, and Bowie himself said some troubling things during this period, though it seems clear now he was just being a dilettante.