David Bowie, from *Space Oddity* to *Blackstar*

Meet the Artist IV

For the earlier Meet-the-Artist features, see these posts on Leonard Bernstein, Bruno Walter, and Yo-yo Ma.

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The first song I remember hearing by David Bowie was “Let’s Dance,” some time in the spring of 1983. I was thirteen, and heavily into the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. I thought it was a fun tune with a cool chord progression and horns, and Bowie’s voice was fantastic. I bought the album on vinyl (my first CD player was still two years away), and I wore out the grooves.

At first listen, I thought it was good fun—not up to the standard of “serious” music (by my early-teen standards), like that of Lennon or Plant—but danceable. After a little more time, however, I began to notice the strangeness of some of lyrics and effects in songs like “Ricochet” and “Cat People” (“the sound of the devil breaking parole”) and even some of the more haunting qualities of the catchy title tune: “under the moonlight, the serious moonlight.” What makes moonlight serious? It’s a great lyric—and apparently Bowie thought so too, hence the “Serious Moonlight Tour.”

But then I discovered Ziggy—and everything changed.

I clearly remember the first time I heard “Rock and Roll Suicide,” the final track on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, on the cheap Sears all-in-one turntable/tape-deck/eight-track/amplifier/radio in my room. These lyrics:

Oh no, love! You’re not alone,
No matter what or who you’ve been,
No matter when or where you’ve seen,
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain,
I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain.
Just turn on with me and you’re not alone,
Give me your hands, because you’re wonderful.

Most teenagers are self-dramatizing and think that they are first to have the feelings that they are having, and I was no different. I was a skinny, unpopular, bookish kid and an only child, and it seemed like Bowie was singing directly to me, telling me that I was ok, that I wasn’t alone, and that someone else knew what it was like.

From that point, he became my patron saint. Of course, I know that he wasn’t a saint, but to me he could do no wrong. Even when Never Let Me Down dropped in 1987 to terrible reviews, I thought that it was great. (To this day, I have a soft spot for that record, even though my more mature ears can now tell that it was something of an artistic low point.)

I saw him live twice, and he was a generous and charismatic performer, though he claimed that he never felt at ease on stage. I had a chance to see him one more time in the early 2000s but missed the chance, and this came back to haunt me when I received news of his death in January of 2016. I don’t normally get emotional about celebrity deaths, but Bowie was important, and I took it hard. And then we lost Prince just a couple of months later.

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For this meet-the-artist feature, I have created not one, but two playlists. My idea is that there will be three sorts of listeners:

1. Those who aren’t very familiar with Bowie

2. Casual fans who know the hits

3. Super fans, who can debate with me about my selections and omissions

With this in mind, I have made one playlist, entitled “Boys Keep Swinging,” which includes most of the familiar songs. Those new to Bowie should start here. I have made a second playlist, entitled “Cocaine Side Effects,” for those who are ready for a deeper dive, and for those who don’t need to hear all of the hits.

The limited commentary below will lay out the broad outlines of his musical trajectory. For those who would like even more commentary, you will have a chance to read my two-part analysis of his Young Americans album over the next couple of weeks, starting on Wednesday. The lists are roughly chronological, starting with 1969’s Space Oddity album and concluding with his final masterpiece, 2016’s Blackstar. (Has anyone ever finished a career so magnificently? It was released just two days before his death from cancer.)

Links to the playlists on Apple Music and Spotify:

Bowie: Boys Keep Swinging (familiar tunes) on Apple Music

Bowie: Cocaine Side Effects (less familiar tunes) on Apple Music

Bowie: Boys Keep Swinging (familiar tunes) on Spotify

Bowie: Cocaine Side Effects (less familiar tunes) on Spotify

Searching for a Style (1969-1971): Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory

I have not included any selections from Bowie’s self-titled debut for Pye Records, because I find it pretty unlistenable (though it has its champions). In these three early albums, all excellent, he moves from folkish, Dylan-inflected music through heavier rock through . . . whatever Hunky Dory is. I’ll tell you what it is: his early masterpiece, a great record, and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing if you haven’t before.

By the way, most of you are probably familiar with the song “Space Oddity,” which leads off the “Boys Keep Swinging” playlist, but even if you know it well, I recommend listening to Tony Visconti’s remix, which he made for the album’s fiftieth anniversary. It sounds as if a veil has been removed from the original recording.

Glam (1972-1974): Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Pinups, Diamond Dogs

This is the period that made Bowie famous, with the makeup, the changing personas (from Ziggy to Aladdin to Halloween Jack), the alien-comes-to-earth, sexually ambiguous aesthetic. But even if you put aside all of the theatricality, it remains thrilling music and sounds as fresh now as it ever has. Each of these albums has its own production style; Ziggy and Aladdin sound superb (though Bowie’s voice is a bit far back in the mix in the latter), but Diamond Dogs could really use the sort of remix treatment that Space Oddity received. It’s a great record that could have been better recorded and mixed.

Plastic Soul (1975-1976): Young Americans, Station to Station

From Hunky Dory through Scary Monsters (eleven studio albums total) Bowie gave us one of the most extraordinary winning streaks in the history of pop music. It’s up there with the Beatles in the 60s or Prince in the 80s. Of these albums, only Pinups falls below the level of greatness. And these two albums from the middle of the decade are my favorites from that streak. During the Diamond Dogs tour, Bowie transformed his look and his musical style, and he stripped back the production under the influence of the “Philly soul” sound. Young Americans emerged from this shift, in a style that he referred to as “plastic soul.” Station to Station retained the groove but added experiments with form and production, starting with the extraordinary title track and concluding with Bowie as torch singer in “Wild is the Wind.”

Fun fact: the title of the “Cocaine Side Effects” playlist is derived from the lyrics of the title track of Station to Station: “It’s not the side effects of the cocaine, / I’m thinking that it must be love.”

I’ll have a lot more to say about Young Americans, as I do an analytical deep dive into that album over the next two weeks.

Berlin to New Romanticism (1977-1980): Low, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters

Bowie doubled down on experimentation, teaming up with Brian Eno on his next three records, which form what has been called his “Berlin period,” though only Heroes was actually recorded in Berlin. These records are remarkable for many reasons, but perhaps most striking is how much they seem to forecast the future. Much of the sound of early-1980s progressive pop music can be heard in 1977’s Low. Listen for the minimalist synthesizers and the gated snare drum, for example. But despite the experimentation, this period includes some of his most memorable songs: “Sound and Vision,” “Heroes,” “Look Back in Anger,” etc.

Scary Monsters doesn’t really fit with this period, but then it doesn’t fit with what follows either. It’s great record, which doesn’t sound like any other in his catalogue—still experimental but more guitar heavy. “Ashes to Ashes,” the sequel to “Space Oddity,” is one of his best tunes.

Dance (1983-1987): Let’s Dance, Tonight, Never Let Me Down

With Let’s Dance, Bowie embraced a radio-friendly sound in a big way, and it worked remarkably well for one album and then not very well for the next two. By general consensus, Tonight and Never Let Me Down are the nadir of his catalogue, but even on these weaker albums, there are gems to be found. “Loving the Alien” is a beautiful song, and the whole Never Let Me Down album is nostalgic guilty pleasure for me.

Weird story: I once had a dream in which I picked up a prescription from the pharmacy and went to my car to take the pill. After doing so, my fingers started to fall off, and I rummaged around the floor of the car trying to collect them.

The next day (in real life), I happened to take out the Never Let Me Down CD for the first time in probably ten years. I got to the track “Time Will Crawl” (included here) and was startled to hear these lyrics:

I had a bad migraine
That lasted three long years,
And the pills that I took
Made my fingers disappear.

And by the way, can I get a shout-out for “Absolute Beginners”? I think that it’s one of the best songs of the 1980s, and it seems completely forgotten now.

New Band (1988-1992): Tin Machine, Tin Machine II

At the end of the 80s—perhaps partly because of the lukewarm reception of his previous two albums—Bowie wanted the experience of being in a band, a group of “equals.” Of course, he was David Bowie, so he was a bit more equal than the others. The first Tin Machine album sounds like grunge two years before the grunge revolution. It received mixed reviews, but I think it’s brilliant and holds up very well. For some reason, Tin Machine II is not available on the streaming platforms; it’s not as good as the first album anyway.

From this era, I’ve also included Bowie’s appearance on the 1990 Adrian Belew track, “Pretty Pink Rose,” if only to hear him sing this lyric: “She’s the poor man’s gold, she’s the anarchist’s crucible / Flying in the face of the despot cannibal.”

New Marriage, Old Friends (1993-2003): Black Tie White Noise, The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Hours, Heathen, Reality

Black Tie White Noise is a warm, lovely, danceable record, much of which celebrates his new marriage to Iman, which really seems to have changed his life for the better.

Over the next decade, I lost track of him somewhat, as I was living in New Orleans and obsessed with jazz. I did listen to Outside at the time, his reunion with Brian Eno, and I liked it, but I have come to appreciate its uncompromising strangeness much more in the last few years. (I think that the three tracks included from it here are amazing.) For the most part, I don’t love The Buddha of Suburbia, Earthling, or Hours, but Heathen (his reunion with producer Tony Visconti) and Reality are both, to my ears, half great. If they had been edited together, they would have made one great album. The Reality Tour record, however, may be his best live album. That band was fantastically tight, and he seemed very happy performing with them.

Swan song (2013-2016): The Next Day, Blackstar

The Next Day and Blackstar are both stunners, especially the latter—one of the best albums of his career (sometimes I think it’s the best), and he made it as he was dying. It’s his final gift to us. A huge part of what makes Blackstar special is the band: Bowie teamed up with Donny McCaslin’s jazz combo, and the results are phenomenal, and only possible with this particular group of musicians. If only they could have toured. Several moments on this album still moisten my eyes to this day. I’ve included five out of the seven tracks across the two playlists, but just go ahead and listen to the whole thing. I think it’s one of the best records ever made by anyone in any genre.

Tune in over the next couple of Wednesdays for my deep dive into Young Americans.

Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet stage microphone to yours.