Bowie's first album was a mixture of mod baroque pop and music hall shenanigans. The songs tend to deal with tea-drinkers, scone-eaters and London art-school high jinks. There's none of the pure spaced-out oddness of his later albums, but songs like "Love You Till Tuesday" are hip-shakingly cool while "Please Mr. Gravedigger" is just very odd.
Even with the hit single "Space Oddity," the original Bowie LP, Man of Words/Man of Music bombed. It was reissued under this title after Ziggy Stardust took off, and finally charted in America. Not brilliant, but Bowie darkly balances Donovan and Mark Bolan-style psych-folk with his own more unsettling brand of rock weirdness. "Unwashed," in particular, is a neglected gem. The bonus disc is highlighted by "The Prettiest Star" and "London Bye, Ta-Ta."
Bowie's first hard-rocking effort, released in 1970. The tough, guitar-centric sound comes courtesy of then-new band mate Mick Ronson. The Man Who Sold the World was the first in a long line of gazillion-selling records for David Bowie. For the next five years, he and Ronson would record some of the best rock music on the planet.
Bowie brought twisted futurism, the English music hall and the Velvet Underground to the touchy-feely Singer-Songwriter genre on his first truly great album. Ignored on it's initial 1972 release, "Changes" became a hit single years later, while "Life on Mars," "Queen Bitch," "Pretty Things" and others deserved the same fate.
From the slow build of "Five Years" to the final blast of "Rock & Roll Suicide," Bowie's first hit album has only improved with age. FM radio has never stopped playing "Ziggy Stardust" and "Suffragette City" because even if you cut the platform shoes off and wipe the makeup away -- you're still left with incredible rock'n'roll. This edition adds an extra CD with demos, and the essential Bowie cuts "The Supermen," "Velvet Goldmine," "John, I'm Only Dancing," and a cover of Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam."
Bowie's paranoid, surreal tour of America (a land where revolutionaries become media stars and faded matinee idols become grotesque monsters) gets a bonus disc full of live cuts, alternate takes and rarities. The best of the extra tracks includes "All the Young Dudes" (a hit penned for Mott the Hoople) and a different version of "John I'm Only Dancing."
This 1973 collection of covers marked Bowie's growing boredom with his Ziggy Stardust persona. Big changes were not far off. Meant as a showcase for his early influences, the album is not considered absolutely essential, but will certainly provide some fun for his bigger fans.
David Bowie scrapped a planned musical based on 1984 and came up with this degenerate mix of sleazy rock and totalitarian disdain. The title track plays like a lost Stones classic, "1984" sounds like a theme song to a whitesploitation movie and (best of all, by far) "Rebel Rebel" became the defining single of the glam rock era. This edition comes remastered and houses a bonus disc that includes "Growin' Up" (a fantastic Springsteen cover) and a version of "Rebel Rebel" that somehow manages to best the "it can't get any better" LP version.
Bowie's early rock hits get schmaltzy makeovers, with added pianos, saxophones and glitz, on an album recorded during his fruitiest period. Kicking off the disco obsession that came with Young Americans, Bowie hints that if Roxy Music were somehow less human, they would have put this out. Truly weird.
Bowie's interest in the Philadelphia soul sound of the 1970s merged with his Anglo-Saxon disgust for the cocaine-fueled high life he was then enjoying to create the blueprint for early '80s New Wave. Disco for those who hated themselves for dancing their lives away, this features the monster hit "Fame" and the brilliant title track.
The perfect combination of Bowie's pop instincts and avant-garde inclinations. "Golden Years" is the rare disco hit that FM rock radio continues to embrace, while most of the disc is a bracing mix of cold Krautrock, American Soul, British reserve and otherworldly sonic experimentation. Bowie's cover of the old standard "Wild is the Wind" is priceless.
Bowie fled from fame, cocaine induced madness and America to make the first of his celebrated Berlin albums. The fragmented lyrics, detached vocals and the big, spare drum sounds first heard here later became the signature style of the 1980s. Half instrumental, the album's highlight is "Sound and Vision," which luxuriates in the heavenly sphere inhabited by music, not man.
Featuring brilliant art rock, organic instrumentals and the best guitar work Robert Fripp has ever delivered, this belongs in every marooned alien's record collection. The title track, a timeless pop masterpiece, is heard more in the new millennium than in 1977, while "Blackout" catches Bowie's unique mix of wounded romanticism and mad isolation better than any other song.
This disc captures Bowie's excellent 1978 tour in support of Heroes; the reissue puts the transformed Ziggy tunes, synth tracks, art-robot rock and sterling pop songs back in the order he played them in concert. "Five Years" loses some of its power with more emotion, while the needy/creepy mental/erotic collapse of "Breaking Glass" is brilliantly rendered.
Bowie's bizarrely underrated travelogue of moonlit beaches, lush jungles and scarred emotional landscapes. Both the European hit "D.J." and the louder-than-punk storm swirling behind "Boys Keep Swinging" are still ahead of the sound curve.
Bowie somehow brilliantly balances sleek alternative pop ("Fashion" and "Ashes to Ashes") with jagged, brittle and often madly paranoid art rock. The guitar buzz on this album still has the power to astound while the lyrics, (with the exception of the fragilely optimistic "Up the Hill Backwards") speak of hopes dashed in a world gone horribly wrong.
On his most commercially successful album, Bowie traded in his respected outsider status to join the ranks of stadium-filling rock 'n' roll royalty. Let's Dance has so many shoulder-padded hits on it that it's almost a 1980s singles collection: "Modern Love," "China Girl" and the title track are only the beginning.
Though this Ziggy is a live set released a decade after it was recorded (1973), the music sounded perfect alongside all the new wave and post-punk dominating youth culture in the early '80s. Rock critics were actually dismissive of the fact that Bowie and longtime producer Tony Visconti chose to touch up the original recordings, but apparently they were in rough shape. Either way, if you want a snapshot of the singer's stage show during his Ziggy years, this will do the trick quite nicely. All the classics are here: "Oh! You Pretty Things," "Space Oddity," "Suffragette City" and so on.
Though this is the album where Bowie started to loose the plot, it's actually a better disc than even the artist himself believes (has he heard Never Let Me Down?). "Blue Jean" was one of the great 1980s pop singles, "Don't Look Down" and "Tonight" have their defenders, and Bowie freaks think "Loving the Alien" ranks among his best (even if it doesn't).
David Bowie was cast in a fantasy musical, made up to look like a mix of Fu Manchu and Andy Warhol and then asked to write some songs for the movie. The film failed at the box office but gained a cult following over the years, helped along by its imaginative look and a cast that includes Muppets, Bowie and the impossibly beautifully Jennifer Connelly. Trevor Jones' respectable score is a very 1980s mix of orchestral synths and stinging guitar licks, but there are a few Bowie tunes here for hardened fans (the best of which is the concluding "Underground").
Bowie's weakest effort seems all the worse in light of his claims that he was really trying to make a good pop album. Retro-ironic 1980s enthusiasts or Bowie fanatics may love this one, but everyone else would be better served by exploring practically anything else in his catalogue.
David Bowie's superb 1989 career retrospective gets remastered and expanded to include an extra disc of songs that go well into the '90s. Sound + Vision is really aimed at Bowie fanatics rather than newcomers, so the real joys here are the rarities, which include the fey mod rocker "London Bye Ta-Ta," a medley of "1984," a cinematic cover of Springsteen's "It's Hard To Be A Saint in the City," the disco-rocking "After Today" and the superior single mix of "Rebel Rebel."
For some, this career-spanning retrospective will offer everything they need from the prolific Mr. Bowie. His best-known radio hits with a smattering of semi-obscure gems give a good overall view of this seminal musician. A good place for the beginner, but any serious fan will want to collect each of his records.
David Bowie tried to pitch Tin Machine as if it was a democratic band, but this is Bowie product through and through. Tin Machine contains Bowie's best-written batch of tunes since Scary Monsters, though the band's arty take on the classic guitar band sound may not serve the material as effectively as it could. Top tunes include "Bus Stop," "I Can't Read" (later done solo in a more powerful ballad reading), "Prisoner of Love" and the single "Under the God." This debut sold very well, but the weak follow-up and badly received tour (which was devoid of Bowie solo material) effectively ended the band.
Though far from perfect, Black Tie White Noise is where David Bowie stopped coasting on accumulated goodwill and got back to work. While this one is warmed by the glow of Bowie's marriage ("Miracle Goodnight" being the standout romantic cut), our boy still manages to sound emotionally unmoored on the single "Jump They Say," "You've Been Around" and a solid cover of Scott Walker's "Nite Flights." Released in 1993, this feels like a drum-tastic '80s set, with Bowie playing a ton of sax as he welcomes back old friends like Mick Ronson.
Bowie jumps back into the pop-meets-avant pond with late-1970s cohort Brian Eno. Lightning does not strike again, but "Strangers When We Meet" (a re-recording of a rare movie theme) is probably the best Bowie song of the 1990s.
Bowie latched onto the late-1990s electronic jungle craze and went on tour with Nine Inch Nails. About as good as the music that inspired it (no comment), and Bowie is obviously very fond of "I'm Afraid of Americans," but it's still rather dispiriting for most fans.
Released in 1999, Hours finds Bowie shedding his chameleon persona and just playing a batch of new songs. Many critics found this record to be a welcome departure from his recent attempts at reinventing himself and the album itself stands as a solid effort from this respected and seminal artist.
Twenty years of Bowie's cutting-edge instrumentals come together to make a surprisingly strong chill collection. The majority of tracks are culled from Low and Heroes, but rarities, B-sides, soundtrack work and tracks from other studio albums are featured as well.
This brilliant two-disc set chronicles Bowie's "Live in the Studio" progress from spotty pop hopeful to rocking singer-songwriter to shining star of the glam movement. The Thin One and his band are completely on fire, still creating chills with lean versions of songs like "Five Years," "Andy Warhol" and "Moonage Daydream."
This brooding album may not have an obvious single, but by forgetting about current fashions and trends, Bowie has crafted his best disc in years. The world's still a dark, dangerous but oddly romantic place, and the thin, well-dressed one seems reinvigorated by the fact that the rest of us have caught his sense of paranoia. Top marks go to "Sunday," "Slip Away" and "I Demand A Better Future." This edition adds four bonus cuts, including the uncommonly fine "Conversation Piece" and a 1979 post-punk redo of "Panic In Detroit."
2002's Heathen was the best David Bowie album in ages, and this more guitar-oriented follow-up may even be better. Bowie once again ignores popular styles and instead chases a rather dark and mysterious muse. Crap faux manga album art hides a superior batch of originals and two choice covers, one by George Harrison and another by Jonathan Richman.
Want to know how the times are changing for physical music? Bowie selected a batch of his favorite non-hits and created a CD that he gave away in a British Sunday paper (which instantly sold out). Bowie picks a couple of fantastic numbers from the underrated Lodger ("Fantastic Voyage" and "Repetition"), the brilliantly overwrought epic "Teenage Wildlife" and the devastating folk-noir "Bewlay Brothers." "Loving the Alien" was an '80s fan favorite, but it's hard to believe that even Bowie likes "Time Will Crawl" (presented here in a remix).
This captures David Bowie's 2003 concert stand in Dublin during a time when he was obviously reenergized and experiencing an artistic comeback. Bowie completely sidesteps doing a greatest hits show, and instead shuffles in strong new material and old fan favorites ("Breaking Glass," "Five Years," "Sister Midnight") with many of the songs that are still widely played on FM radio ("Changes," "Under Pressure," "China Girl," etc). Bowie and his young band sizzle throughout; sadly, a heart attack would derail the tour and his career.
The Next Day is a stripped-down art-rock album, one riddled with scratchy guitars, synthesizers and ambient haze. At 66, Bowie certainly sounds well-worn, even gravelly at times, as on "Love Is Lost" (which is one of the album's best cuts). Another keeper is "How Does the Grass Grow?," a paranoia-powered bubbler that just might be a nod to The Move's psych-pop classic "I Can Hear the Grass Grow." The biggest sticking point is the rhythm section and how they're recorded (way too muddy). On just about every tune here they really should be louder and more aggressive in a dance-rock kind of way.
