What does The Jean Genie mean?

David Bowie: The Jean Genie Meaning

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Album cover for The Jean Genie album cover

Song Released: 1972


The Jean Genie Lyrics

A small Jean Genie snuck off to the city
Strung out on lasers and slash back blazers
Ate all your razors while pulling the waiters
Talking bout Monroe and walking on Snow White
New York's a go-go and everything tastes right
Poor little...

  1. anonymous
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    Jan 29th 2021 !⃝

    Why don’t all you morons commenting simply look it up? None of your interpretations correspond with the origin of the song...

    Quite simply - the song was initially inspired by Cyrinda Fox (sometime groupie, ex wife of both David Johansen and Steven Tyler).

    Bowie apparently also was reaching for a Yardbirds type sound - as that is what Foxe herself suggested.

  2. anonymous
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    Dec 31st 2020 !⃝

    Obs it's about his admiration of Iggy Pop onstage and crawling thru 1970s NYC club life. Iggys's left Detroit and arrived on the New York scene.

  3. anonymous
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    Jan 2nd 2020 !⃝

    so there was this interview where he talked about warhol and that he thinks that he has green skin and is a reptile maybe it´s about him because they met two years before he wrote the song and maybe he was just fascinated lol

  4. anonymous
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    Dec 18th 2019 !⃝

    Chimney stacks means blowjobs. So no he isn’t talking about a gay guy. It’s about a man who has a mythical way of getting into women’s pants.

  5. anonymous
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    Mar 18th 2019 !⃝

    Sounds like drugs to me!!

  6. anonymous
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    Oct 15th 2018 !⃝

    Bowie himself said, "it was 'a smorgasbord of imagined Americana,' with a protagonist inspired by Iggy Pop, and the title being an allusion to author Jean Genet." (wikipedia/cites on the wiki article)

  7. anonymous
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    May 8th 2018 !⃝

    A gay guy ("...loves chimney stacks") who has hit the NYC scene ("Snuck off to the city") is a bit naive ("Poor little Greenie") but is having a great time with sex, sophistication and drugs ("...pulling the waiters / Talking bout Monroe / And walking on Snow White"). I think he's a genius at getting into others' jeans!

    I can't figure out, though: "..says he's a beautician...keeps all your dead hair / For making up underwear", nor the "
    He can't drive his module / He bites on the neon and sleeps in the capsule" bit - any ideas? Anyone out there? Any time? LOL - see 'Candidate'

  8. anonymous
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    Oct 14th 2017 !⃝

    Inner lives of the reptilian illuminati

  9. anonymous
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    Sep 10th 2017 !⃝

    Its about a guy who has no trouble at all getting laid because he has this mythical creature, the jean-genie, hovering over his shoulder and helping him get into everybody's pants!

  10. anonymous
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    Jan 6th 2017 !⃝

    My opinion is he lives as a man "jean" through the day, and dresses as woman "Genie" by night obviously as a prostitute, i think he wants to be a woman all the time and very confused

  11. anonymous
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    Nov 28th 2016 !⃝

    obvious...it's about a newly-come-out homosexual, who lives the lifestyle with abandon, "the jean genie" who lives on his back, he "screams and he moans," "jean genie," let yourself go...


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