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David Robert Jones (January 8, 1947 - January 10, 2016)--better known as David Bowie (named after the bowie-knife)--left behind a long, eclectic catalog of music which can be counted alongside The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and a few others as being among the most-influential of the late twentieth-century. Furthermore, he had the tendency to veer from genre-to-genre as frequently as he changed style--a more important asset of Bowie than one initially thinks due to his visual focus.
The albums in-question for the David Bowie Discography series include the following twenty-six studio albums:
Space Oddity (1969)
The Man Who Sold The World (1970)
Hunky Dory (1971)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Aladdin Sane (1973)
Diamond Dogs (1974)
Young Americans (1975)
Station to Station (1976)
The Berlin Trilogy
Low (1977)
"Heroes" (1977)
Lodger (1979)
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
Let's Dance (1983)
Tonight (1984)
Never Let Me Down (1987)
Tin Machine (1989)
Tin Machine II (1991)
Black Tie White Noise (April 5, 1993)
The Buddha of Suburbia (November 8, 1993)
1. Outside (1995)
Earthling (1997)
hours (1999)
Heathen (2002)
Reality (2003)
The Next Day (2013)
Blackstar (2016)
Some fans will notice a couple of omissions. First of all, the album David Bowie (from 1967) is the subject of a personal veto since Bowie himself all-but-disowned the album (since it was on a small record label, he simply let it languish in obscurity)--and honestly, it's mediocre at best...so I feel that if I were to post a review of it on Bowie's birthday, I'd be pissing on the man's grave. Another album I'm not covering is the No Plan EP since Blackstar works so much better as a finale--that and I've already made up my mind to cover mainly the studio albums of original material (so no Pin-Ups).
With that said, you're probably wondering why I'm covering the Tin Machine albums and The Buddha of Suburbia. In the case of the former, David Bowie was part of Tin Machine, so those albums are worth talking about. As for the latter, its status as a 'soundtrack album' isn't an accurate one since it consists of all original songs.
Now with my claim at the end of the Hand. Cannot. Erase. review/analysis that the David Bowie discography will mark a 'streamlining' of my review process, I should give an idea of how these reviews will work. Since David Bowie was (in my mind) an overlooked lyricist capable of considerable depth, I'd be remiss if I were to gloss over that entirely for the sake of brevity. So I made a compromise: most albums will involve me analyzing the lyrics to select songs (about 2 to 5 per album), with no album having a lack of lyrical analysis. Although I'm keeping which sets of lyrics I analyze a secret (and I've already decided which songs to analyze the lyrics to), I can say that there's a mix of his classic hits, well-regarded deep-cuts, lyrics which tackle political/social issues, lyrics which show that Bowie was imperfect, and a few complex sets of lyrics. But for a handful of albums (among which are the most important in his catalog), I will tackle the entirety of their lyrics--and I can reveal those albums right now:
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Diamond Dogs (1974)
Station to Station (1976)
The Berlin Trilogy
Low (1977)
"Heroes" (1977)
Lodger (1979)
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
1. Outside (1995)
Blackstar (2016)
In the case of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Diamond Dogs, Station to Station, and 1. Outside, these four albums are (to varying degrees of looseness) concept albums, so it wouldn't make sense to talk about only a portion of their lyrics. For the albums that are part of The Berlin Trilogy, Bowie opted to utilize fragmented, avant-garde styles of lyric writing for several songs on these albums--making them a challenge in minimalism, which I welcome and feel up to the task of taking on. As for Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), that one is considered the finale and/or culmination of Bowie's streak of classic albums--plus, the album's content does leave quite a bit to unpack even if it's not a concept album. Finally, Blackstar gives us the rare opportunity--an artist penning his own epitaph within his/her/their art-form of choice--that would be a shame if I were to pass up.
With that in mind, I'll leave you all anticipating the first of the David Bowie reviews (Space Oddity), to be published on January 8th. Before then, you'll probably get a Tom Petty review or two, but the planning process for the Bowie Discography is already underway.