#21

To be honest I’ve not even heard most of the records in the poll

But Let’s Dance is by far the best for side 1 alone. We can just pretend side 2 doesn’t exist and it’s still the best

#22

It’s Outside for me Bob, though I have to say I always find the snobbery towards Let’s Dance a bit ridiculous, a couple of the tracks are a bit flimsy, sure, but it’s a tremendous pop album with three stone cold singles on it. Like I understand why Scary Monsters is the cliched touchstone, but I feel Let’s Dance should be exempt.

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#23

Let’s Dance is a superb pop album by literally anyone else’s standards, and I consider it to be the last great Bowie album till Outside emerges kicking and screaming from the wilderness years.

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#24

Agreed! I think Outside was a victim of timing as much as anything, difficult to see what he could have put out in 1995 and been taken entirely seriously, people would have lost their shit if it had come out in 2015 (maybe without the story)

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#25

As a massive Bowie nut, I will make allowances for all of these albums (with the exception of the Tin Machine ones). Even a crap Bowie album by most people’s standards, is a gem to me. I will happily sit around and listen to Tonight and Never Let Me Down.

That said, Outside is definitely my favourite. It’s a little overlong and too ambitious, but it’s chock full of great tracks.

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#26

I think we have to be realistic about these albums - none of them really. stand comparison with any of the 70s work, but that’s not surprising as Bowie’s work in the 70s represents a sustained period of creativity that no-one has ever matched in the history of popular music. No-one could expect to be still sustaining that level 20 years later. That doesn’t mean there is no value in them though.

There are records I could never bring myself to listen to in full (Tonight, Never Let Me Down, the two Tin Machine records). Even on those there are some great songs - Loving The Alien for instance. There are a fair few albums where you can sense him desperately seeking a new ‘idea’ that will take him somewhere interesting. Sometimes this is pretty successful (Outside, Buddha of Suburbia) sometimes less so (Earthling). Those projects are all patchy but fascinating.

In a sense Let’s Dance is similar in that the ‘idea’ was to make a massive pop album. It’s successful in that its singles are brilliant and it was massively commercially successful. I’ve always wondered why the rest of it is so poor. It’s probably the mark of Bowie in this period that, unlike in the 70s, he often doesn’t seem to have quite enough material to fill a whole album. Hence perhaps the number of lacklustre covers on some of these albums.

The interesting thing about Heathen is that I think he relaxed a bit and stopped trying to reinvent the wheel or strive for either massive commercial success or cutting edge ‘relevance’. I think this was probably influenced by working on the Toy project as I’ve said above. The result is a really consistent set of songs for the first time since Scary Monsters. Even the cover version (of Cactus) is really great.

What is really amazing is that, against the odds, when it came to making Blackstar he did match and arguably even surpass his 70s work.

#27

Add We Prick You to the list of bangers on 1. Outside!

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#28

Think the only song I’m not that keen on Side 2 is Ricochet but the rest is great - particularly Cat People!

#29

The soundtrack version is so much better than the album version though!

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#30

Yeah this is my only issue with Let’s Dance, an otherwise very good album.

#31

I personally think Black Tie White Noise is a really good album even though nobody else seems to care for it. I would say Heathen is probably his best though (out of the ones I’ve heard). The Next Day is good but I find it a bit boring and unmemorable, to me it just sounds like a generic modern rock album and not much else.

#32

True although I still think there is merit to be found in the brooding and slightly more menacing version found on the album.

#33

Just want to thank this thread for making me go back to Outside and listen to it properly for the first time. I still think it is slightly marred by filler - a prime example of the ‘CD bloat’ that blighted a lot of mid 90s albums - but the best bits are superb. A 50 minute album made up of its 10 best songs with just a few brief snatches of the interlude stuff would be amazing. Had completely forgotten this song - what a neglected classic.

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#34

Yup, cut the silly conceptual fluff and it’s chock full of great songs.

#35

Actually, pretty much all of the ‘proper songs’ on it are really good. I think what put me off it at th time was partly the bloat and partly that I’m not that mad on the singles - I don’t mind Heart’s Filthy Lesson and Hello Spaceboy but there a lot of songs on the album that are better (No Control, Oxford Town, We Prick You, I’m Derranged etc). Strangers When We Meet has always been great of course.

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#36

When i mentioned upthread about bowie’s singing being great on ‘outside’ i was thinking specifically if this track, especially the coda/outro. Reminds me of his vox on ‘station to station’ album, magnificently overwrought.

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#37

I’m pretty sure it was hearing ‘Heart’s Filthy Lesson’ on the end credits of SE7EN that pushed my to buy the album in the first place, so I do have a deep love for that track (there’s also a really good NIN remix of it).

Weirdly there’s also a strange version of ‘Oxford Town’ playing during a party scene in Starship Troopers, which caught me off guard at the time.

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#38

It’s the NINess of it that puts me off, I’m afraid. I just find it a bit clumpy and obvious sounding.

#39

Fair enough! I was 17 and thoroughly enamoured with anything NIN-like (I even bought that godawful Rob Halford ‘industrial’ album, 2WO), so it was always going to be a shoo-in for me. But it was great that the album wasn’t all just that sound.

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#40

Coming at the album as a longtime Bowie fan it’s interesting how he incorporates elements of lots of his previous records - you can see it in his use of musicians from various parts of his career - Eno, Mick Garson, Carlos Alomar, Reeves Gabriel etc and in the sound of various songs (the way Strangers When We Meet has faint echoes of Heroes, for instance). Heart’s Filthy Lesson stands out a bit because it seems like a (not entirely successful) attempt to sound ‘contemporary’. He did the same thing (to not very happy effect) on Earthling.