"TVC 15" is a song by English musician David Bowie, released on his 1976 album Station to Station. RCA Records later released it as the second single from the album on 30 April 1976. The song was recorded in late 1975 at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles. Co-produced by Bowie and Harry Maslin, the recording featured guitarists Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick, bassist George Murray, drummer Dennis Davis, pianist Roy Bittan and Warren Peace on backing vocals. The upbeat song is mostly art rock performed in a style reminiscent of the 1950s. Lyrically, the song concerns a character's girlfriend being eaten by a television set. It was inspired by a dream of Iggy Pop's and Bowie's role in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Some lyrics are also influenced by the Yardbirds and Kraftwerk.
Upon release as a single, "TVC 15" peaked at number 33 on the UK Singles Chart and number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Its release coincided with the European leg of the Isolar tour. Initial reviews praised the song as one of the album's highlights, although some reviewers found the lyrics difficult to comprehend. Later reviews continue to praise the song, with some considering it one of Bowie's best. It has appeared on several compilation albums and was remixed by Maslin in 2010 for reissues of Station to Station and remastered in 2016 for the Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976) box set.
Recording
After completing his work on The Man Who Fell to Earth in September 1975, David Bowie returned to Los Angeles to begin recording his next album. Personnel-wise, Bowie brought back the same team used for "Fame": co-producer Harry Maslin, guitarists Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick, drummer Dennis Davis and Bowie's old friend Geoff MacCormick (credited as Warren Peace), while bassist George Murray was recruited to play bass; pianist Roy Bittan, a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, joined the sessions in mid-October. For the studio, Bowie and Maslin chose Los Angeles's Cherokee Studios, which featured five different studio rooms, 24-track mixing consoles, 24-hour session times, and a lounge bar.
Recording for the new album began in late September 1975 and ended in late November. Recording for "TVC 15" began shortly after the completion of "Golden Years". Like the majority of the album, the song's elements were primarily built in the studio rather than written before. According to biographer Chris O'Leary, the dual guitars on "TVC 15" "out-grew" the 24-track mixing console, requiring Maslin to "keep bouncing down guitar and vocal dubs". Bowie later remembered almost nothing of the album's production, due to his heavy cocaine use during the sessions.
Composition
Musically, "TVC 15" is described as art rock, while O'Leary calls it an "avant-garde novelty song". The writers of Rolling Stone later found the track to be a mix of new wave and boogie-woogie. According to David Buckley, it is the most upbeat track on the album. James Perone notes the music as " a pseudo-late-1950s style", comparing it to the sound of the American group Sha Na Na. NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray, who call the track "incongruously jolly", note an influence of the Yardbirds, as evident by the opening "oh-OH-oh-OH-OH", which is borrowed from the Yardbirds' 1964 song "Good Morning Little School Girl". O'Leary describes the "Oh my TVC 15" refrain as "half-mantra, half-jingle". Music critic Robert Christgau noted the track's "spaceyness" and blend of "Lou Reed, disco, and Dr. John", while Ultimate Classic Rocks Michael Gallucci found influences of krautrock.
The song is primarily in the key of C major, featuring a blues-style chord progression in the verses, with an additional F minor sprinkled throughout. The bridges are in F7/A7, containing a Kraftwerk-inspired sequence of "trans-sition" and "trans-mission" lines. These are undercut by Alomar plucking on his guitar's B string. Alomar described his and Slick's guitars as "drones": "The music would stay in one place and just keep going." Alomar later revealed that Bowie "really wanted [the nature of the track] fucked up like when we did [the Lodger track] 'Boys Keep Swinging', kind of loose and stupid. But then when it got to the end, he really wanted it to drive home." Perone notes that the guitars during the ending section move into late-1970s hard rock territory, while simultaneously including a "rhythmic stumble that suggests changing meters", which he believes provides a direct musical link to the album's title track.