David Bowie Albums
So just who is David Bowie? I guess the answer is: whoever he feels like being. Bowie is often praised for his journey through the styles of glam rock, techno, electronic, and pop, and depending on the album he can be quite good in any style. He is often referred to as one of the greatest album artists ever, which I would argue against any day of the week, but he has had his moments. He is one of the better radio singles artists of all times though, constantly trying to better himself and change stylistically.
I'm not in the habit of making huge profound judgements on people, but since Bowie is so popular, I have decided to listen to most of his stuff and these are my opinions (opinions are like assholes, remember…). He has some great albums, like two or three out of twenty in my opinion, but I am a firm believer in only judging an artist by their ‘successes’. Maybe that is not a compliment and maybe it is, I refuse to tell you! He probably has to be heard to make your own judgement on him, and I mean listen to everything. Your opinion on Bowie can vary wildly depending on how much you have listened to, which is true with most artists but never more true with someone like this who has so many "faces" and personality changes. I personally could sum it up as he had 3 great albums (Ziggy Stardust, Heroes, and Diamond Dogs) and a lot of good to great singles, obviously that does not make him one of my favorite album artists ever. But it would be a boring world if I only talked about stuff I loved, right?
Band Members:
David Bowie – Vocals
Spiders from Mars band:
Mick Ronson – Guitar, Piano
Trevor Bolder – Bass
Mick Woodmansey - Drums
Best Album:
Ziggy Stardust
Biggest Influences:
The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Little Richard, Chuck Berry,
Albums Chronologically:
1969 – 46% - Space Oddity
1970 – 75% - The Man Who Sold the World
1971 – 78% - Hunky Dory
1972 – 93% - Ziggy Stardust
1970 – 65% - Aladdin Sane
1974 - 85% - Diamond Dogs
1975 – 50% - Young Americans
1976 – 68% - Station to Station
1977 – 77% - Low
1978 – 87% - Heroes
1979 – 68% - Lodger
1980 – 55% - Scary Monsters
1969
Space Oddity - 46%
The first notable Bowie album had the strength of the title track single to go off of. Bowie mocks the sound of 60's orchestral pop well enough...but with no tunes worth a dang. Even the title track I find to be over done. This is an album of a person searching for a sound.
Best Songs: Space Oddity (only one worth hearing)
1970
The Man Who Sold the World - 75%
Bowie’s second album is a huge step forward in quality. The record before this seemed by a different artist all together, because The Man Who Sold the World is a really good album. The songs are longer with more progressive rock leanings, and he holds up to most of his contemporaries- this time around Bowie tries to emulate parts of Moody Blues, Genesis, King Crimson and Yes. Among the highlights are the riff heavy "Black Country Rock", his best song yet in the mesmerizing "The Man Who Sold the World" with that killer circular riff, and the demented and spooky lullaby "After All". Other songs that work include the ranting "All the Madmen", the somewhat slightly overdone "Running Gun Blues", and epic closer "The Supermen".
These are the good songs off of an album that despite a jumpy kind of flow, is pretty consistent. By that I mean the opener is too long ("Width of a Circle" at over eight minutes) and several other tracks towards the middle kind of run together and don’t make much of an impression (“Savior Machine”, “She Shook Me Cold”). The best song (title-track) is near the end, which always kinda makes you want to skip to that one. As long as Bowie can do what he does here on other albums though, I'll be game to listen! Worthy of praise, and grows on you after repeated listens, though he still has much to improve upon searching for his identity.
Best Songs: The Man Who Sold the World, Black Country Rock, After All
1971
Hunky Dory - 78%
This album is a worthy match to Man Who Sold the World but not as "rocking". More calm, pensive tunes take over like the successful epic "Life On Mars" which is his first time his ambition has met his songwriting chops, the ode to Marvel Comic's X-Men "Oh, You Pretty Things", and the strange piano ballad "Fill Your Heart". When Bowie does rock, it usually works: "Queen Bitch" is easily my favorite song by this man so far, a truly mean and simple rock song that points to a bright future; its super catchy and addictive right off the bat. Also successfully expanding on the vocab of Bowie are the experimental "Andy Warhol", an ode to his mentor; the oddball tune of "Changes", which was one of his first popular music hits; and the chugging "Kooks" which a hidden gem for those into more album oriented formats.
The are some songs that don't work though and make the album a bit of a challenge. First is The Band knock off "Song for Bob Dylan" and the laid-back style does not work for Bowie. Also, the more lyrical songs such as "Quicksand", "Eight Line Poem", and "The Belway Bros" have issues matching music to match the content. Those who claim this album as some kind of masterpiece are overrating it somewhat, but it does contain some great tunes. Still there are strides toward a more consistent format and again, hidden gems (“Fill your Heart” goes for my stand out album track). Bowie holds position quality wise for Hunky Dory, and that's fine with me.
Best Songs: Queen Bitch, Life on Mars, Fill Your Heart, Changes
1972
The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - 93%
David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust is the ultimate album in rock folly - a complete mocking of everything rock n' roll, while also a successful celebration of it. It might be classified as ‘glam rock’ but at its core it finally gets one thing right- it is simply just great music. The songs are diverse, the flow is perfect, and the lyrics are a mix of hysterical, meaningful, and touching. In a way It shouldn't work, and concept albums like this rarely do. Bowie is very influenced by The Who on this record, from the template of hard rock singles full of power chords to the whole idea being reminiscent of their rock opera from 1969 Tommy, but it comes off as strangely unique to Bowie. I do think that Mick Ronson playing Guitar and Piano and getting credit for many arrangements makes a huge difference.
The record starts and ends with crescendo inspired epics "Five Years" and "Rock n' Roll Suicide", the former sets the tone of the album-story building with a repetitive chorus while the latter contains Bowie's best lyrics ever combined with equally great music (slightly taking from Pink Floyd like so many do). In between that we have freak-out rock songs such as "Moonage Daydream" which I suppose would be the personas greatest hit in this make believe land and "Ziggy Stardust" which speaks of a rock star god of his own creation. Then there are the great laid back rockers such as my favorite, the oddly tempoed "Soul Love", the Elton John channeling "Lady Stardust", and the masterwork ballad "Starman"; light speed rockers such as "Suffragette City" which has to be one of the most perfect glam-rock songs ever written ( a nod to T-Rex’s brand for sure) and the slightly less great "Hang On to Yourself". “It Ain’t Easy” is its own kind of instant classic arena rock anthem.
Bowie makes the album work because he taps into the idea of having a fake band of fake people, and making this fake music- it works on a meta level and it’s the album he was always destined to make. All of these songs work, with the exception of the filler track "Star", so Ziggy Stardust FINALLY proves Bowie can make an album up there with the best of them. When in the mood for a Bowie fix, this album is the best place to go in my opinion. Anyone who has a huge complaint about this album is fooling themselves because it is simply one of the more enjoyable experiences around.
Best Songs: Soul Love, Suffragette City, Starman, Ziggy Stardust
1973
Aladdin Sane - 67%
Aladdin Sane comes across as a confused effort. More confused than ‘transitional’ because it seems quite often that Bowie knows not where he is going. It is clear that he likes Roxy Music's version of prog rock and Brian Eno's insane take on abstract keyboard jamming. Let's see why this is clear: the solo running through the otherwise stellar "Aladdin Sane" that almost ruins the song, the voice of Bowie himself that echoes Bryan Ferry at times, the prog-rock attitude of so many of the lame songs like "Drive in Saturday" and "The Prettiest Star". When the band does straight rock it turns about the best music, like the sole stand out great song on here "Cracked Actor", the cool sounding "Jean Genie", and the cover of The Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together". Like Man Who Sold the World (but not as good), the album is jumbled, inconsistent, and often a chore to listen to, despite the fact that half of it is good music. Kind of glam rock, kind of not, sigh…..it gets old fast.
Best Songs: Cracked Actor, Aladdin Sane, Jean Genie
1974
Diamond Dogs - 84%
Well, returning to the idea of a concept record a la Ziggy Stardust has given Bowie another beautiful record. It is almost like Aladdin Sane never existed, as this is the true heir to Ziggy. Originally a concept about the book 1984, he didn't get the rights to do it or something, so the idea is jumbled but it doesn't matter because the music is outstanding! The epic "Diamond Dogs" gets things off to a rousing start, followed by three songs that have roughly the same riff (but it's a good one) of "Sweet Thing" - "Candidate" - "Sweet Thing Reprise". I don't like "Candidate", but the other two are rousing rock songs with the reprise containing an interesting ending. On the second half, the best Bowie single yet exists with "Rebel Rebel". I was never a huge fan of this song until I heard Rickie Lee Jones' cover some years later AND in the context of this record, but it is probably his best single. His own version of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane", if you will. The two songs following that are equally as good, the somber "Rock n' Roll with Me" and the spooky "We Are the Dead" that mimics Bowie's own "After All". Up until here, the album is a minor masterpiece. It is not really helped that the obvious dance song "1984" and "Big Brother/Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" are tacked of at the end, even if it adds to a concept kind of feel. Still, they are not all that bad and I guess the record needed more songs than just seven. My second favorite Bowie record so far, I really think Diamond Dogs is often underrated by people. In fact, the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts, and many of the songs sound better in the context of the record.
Best Songs: Rebel Rebel, We Are the Dead, Sweet Thing, Rock n Roll With Me
1975
Young Americans - 56%
Seemingly having to make an album or two every year, the ever-prolific Bowie comes out with a soul influenced album. Like most Bowie records, about half of it is good.
Best Songs: Fame, Win, Right
1976
Station to Station - 65%
Ok, here's where I start to disagree with the popular consensus about Bowie being a great album artist. See, Bowie is not being any more experimental with this record than he has ever been, he is simply trying a more adventurous kind of rock music: avant rock, the kind pioneered by many before him like Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Keven Ayers, etc. He kind of tried this on Aladdin Sane, but that album had another glam vibe to it so it was more hidden. Here, it is 60's soul meets avant rock. I'm not going to list the ways this has been done better, past or present, anyone could play that game. I will tell you my take on each song though.
These work: "Station to Station" is two songs in one, in which the first song is much better; "Golden Years" is a white version of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" which is not necessarily a bad thing; "TVC15" is a deconstructing catchy rock song that actually says "traaaansition" in the transition, Roxy Music lite. These three songs work well enough that I would not argue any praise this album gets. This doesn't work: soul ballads "World on a Wing", "Stay", and the embarrassing and emotive "Wild as the Wind". So about half and half, like most Bowie albums. There is a more inventive path he could start taking, like the ten minute title track, and we will see what happens as the album is the epitome of transitional.
Best Songs: Tvc 15, Station to Station
1977
Low - 77%
From the first five seconds of Low, you see a completely different kind of Bowie. Personally, it is my kind of album- all jagged and jarring, weird rhythms, nervous, melodic, and produced eloquently by Brian Eno. What is not to like? Well, while most of the album sounds awesome and out-of-this-world production wise, though the music sometimes lags. Also, Bowie is blatantly following Eno's lead in his earlier in 1977 released Before and After Science as the album is half rocking and half ambient, with each side devoted to a sound. This method works on the aforementioned Brian Eno album but not as well on Bowie’s album Low. Most of the first half is great: Bowie's rock songwriting hits new kinds of highs with the rocking "Breaking Glass" and "Be My Wife", one of his best songs in the mechanical clockwork of "Sound and Vision", truly reaching a new kind of melodic bliss. The surrounding instrumentals "Speed of Life" and "A New Career in a New Town" give more to this idea of a futuristic form of music. Those last two songs are so influenced by Brain Eno I wouldn't be surprised if Eno himself had a hand composing them.
The second half of the record is ambient, a new kind of music Eno himself coined. Bowie tries his hand at making this kind of rock, succeeding on "Warzawa" and "Art Decade", and not so much on "Weeping Wall" and "Subterraneans". This album was also influenced by Krautrock of the time: Can, Amon Dull, Cluster, Kraftwerk. I hate mentioning all that, but the truth is simple: if your knowledge of music is such that you know where something came from, something that "copies" it does not sound innovative but has the equal chance to be as interesting. For example, I could say "Bowie does ambient better than Eno and he has improved upon the blueprint", but that would not be true in my opinion. It's tricky, but usually in my experience the originators (for all that means in rock music) are hard to beat. I would rather pull out Eno's Another Green World or Before and After Science than Bowie's Low and it is definitely second rate avant-rock. Whatever else it may be, Low is a vast improvement on Bowie's last two records. Is it one of the best records of the 1970's? Nah, I do find it vastly overrated for even the year of 1977, but there are some great songs here that is a fact not an opinion.
Best Songs: Sound and Vision, Breaking Glass, Art Decade, Be My Wife
1978
Heroes- 87%
Everything about Heroes, the tenth real Bowie record (or eleventh, sigh), is like Low part 2. The first five songs are rock, the next four are an instrumental suite, the last song is some kind of coda for all of it. I like Heroes better though, as I think the songs are more thought out and consistent. The first half contains the great opener "Beauty and the Beast", the Taking Tiger Mountain tribute "Joe the Lion", the soaring "Heroes" which is destined to go down as one of Bowie’s best songs, and the far out "Sons of the Silent Age" and spastic "Blackout". Each of those songs owes something to Kraftwerk or Velvet Underground (Bowie singing pattern switches between Reed and Eno), but they also create their own magical kind of glow.
The second half is MUCH better than Low's was: it sounds like a rocket or car racing to a crash ("V2 Schneider"), then the apocalyptic aftermath with OMINOUS PIANO TONES ("Sense of Doubt"), the transition to heaven ("Moss Garden"), and making peace with it all and successfully doing avant-garde ("Neukoln"). The only thing that don't fit is the last track, "The Secret of Arabia". I have no idea why that song exists, so I usually ignore it. Otherwise this is the best album Bowie has done besides Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs, again he seems to do better if he has a theme to work with even if that theme is instrumental in nature. Last but not least, Robert Fripp, guitarist of King Crimson fame, joins Eno and Bowie in making this album something special, and it works!
Best Songs: Heroes, Neukoln, Beauty and the Beast, Moss Garden
1979
Lodger- 68%
Lodger is unfortunately a return to pop and a return to inconsistency. It still sounds like Eno had something to with the album, especially on the good songs. The Good: The opener "Fantastic Voyage" is one of Bowie's best pop songs (seriously); "African Night Flight" is the most crazed thing on any of the Bowie-Berlin-trilogy and it's great; closer "Red Money" is maybe the perfect Bowie-Eno punk collaboration; "Red Sails" and "DJ" have their moments, though the later sounds so much like Talking Heads it's ridiculous. The Bad: everything I didn't mention. A lot of the album is meandering and as tame as most Bowie albums. They could have saved this material for a better album but instead the album becomes an attempt to be a pop record that is only half worth hearing. Too bad, because it's kind of a lame way to end a very good collaboration with Eno.
Best Songs: Red Money, Fantastic Voyage, African Night Flight
1980
Scary Monsters- 55%
A new influence enters on this album: Pink Floyd. The Wall was huge around this time and you can kind a tell, its influence is all over this album. This is a faux disco rock album. There are four redeeming songs: "Ashes to Ashes" has a couple of genius moments; "Fashion" is kind a long but interesting; "Teenage Wildlife" is a fun epic despite sounding exactly like "Heroes"; in "It's No Game Pt. 2", you can at least hear the bass line and tune.
Best Songs: Ashes to Ashes, It’s No Game Part Two
Sidenote: One day I may get to the rest of the 80’s and 90s output for Bowie, even some of the 2000’s, but it probably won’t be anytime soon. I’ve covered most of his classic era and as you can see I’m not a super fan like some others. There are hundreds upon hundreds of artists I want to review before I give my opinion of that era of Bowie….
Compilations
2002
Best of Bowie – 94%
Bowie excels mostly at Singles, and all of his best ones are here. Not that he doesn’t have great album tracks not represented here, as some of my favorite tunes are those (“Station to Station”, “Red Money”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Soul Love”, “Queen Bitch”). But in all, for beginners and really the average listener, I would always recommend this or another greatest hits as he was master of the rock single. Included here is the classic groove “Under Pressure” (sampled by horrible 90’s ‘rapper’ Vanilla Ice whether he admits it or not) made with Queen. I’m also a fan of “I’m Afraid of Americans” from his 90’s era, “Boys Keep Swinging” and “Let’s Dance” from the 80’s, and honestly the “Daning in the Street” cover with Mick Jagger is so corny it’s hard not to be charmed by it.
There are 39 songs here spanning his whole career, and I would argue its mainly what you need to start with when getting into David Bowie and seeing his genius at crafting a great tune while using multiple styles and personas.
Best Singles: Rebel Rebel, Suffragette City, Heroes, Ashes to Ashes, Under Pressure