David Bowie: The next thread and the next thread...

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10 favourite Bowie songs

Always Crashing In The Same Car
Station To Station
Heroes
Cygnet Committee
A Lad In Vein
Moonage Daydream
Quicksand
Life On Mars
Space Oddity
Blackstar

probably look totally different tomorrow as 10 songs is but a tiny portion of the great mans brilliant body of work.
 
Has anyone not listed "Heroes" or Life on Mars?? Pretty amazing that for an artist with a catalogue as big as Bowie that he has two songs that are both popular with casuals and big-time fans and critics. That's quite rare, I feel.


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Station to Station (album) really is just about the pinnacle of rock music for me.

Every time I sit down to listen to it I wait for something to happen that's less than brilliant, but no. It's all great. TVC15 is goofy for a minute or two, but the chorus leaves me giddy. I love that song by the end because they repeat it approximately 400 times.
 
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LemonMelon said:
Station to Station (album) really is just about the pinnacle of rock music for me.

Every time I sit down to listen to it I wait for something to happen that's less than brilliant, but no. It's all great. TVC15 is goofy for a minute or two, but the chorus leaves me giddy. I love that song by the end because they repeat it approximately 400 times.
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I really love STS. It's utterly fascinating to me, and it's a great listen. I usually call it my favorite Bowie album. But then I remember that it's borderline fascist and racist, and I become a bit less sure about how to feel about it, even though the extremism was a product of mounds of drugs.


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digitize said:
I really love STS. It's utterly fascinating to me, and it's a great listen. I usually call it my favorite Bowie album. But then I remember that it's borderline fascist and racist, and I become a bit less sure about how to feel about it, even though the extremism was a product of mounds of drugs.


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Yeeeeahhh...Bowie thought witches were stealing his semen to birth the antichrist back then.

Not that there's much in the way of fascist/racist content on the album itself.
 
He said some bizarre/regrettable things at that time but I've never really felt like much of that craziness ended up on the album.
 
I listed Life on Mars? And "heroes."

Station to Station is not fascist or racist. Exhibit B is that it's basically a funk album, and the core of his band was black. Exhibit A is that race isn't mentioned at all. It's an album of spiritual longing. There's no political content either. His fascism prediction in the press wasn't really off though.

The political content of his music, as oblique as it is, is that of a very liberal man.

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Considering how much he's explored black music both American and African, worked with countless black musicians, married a black woman, wrote a title song inspired by race relations (Black Tie White Noise), and condemned MTV for not playing more black music all the way back in 82-83, I'd say he probably wasn't a racist.
 
digitize said:
I really love STS. It's utterly fascinating to me, and it's a great listen. I usually call it my favorite Bowie album. But then I remember that it's borderline fascist and racist,


Please, enlighten me as to how this great album is borderline fascist/racist.
He made what some in the gutter press described as a nazi salute to waiting fans at Victoria station when arriving back in Britain to promote the album, and as he himself has stated several times, he can barely remember recording the album, let alone making any gestures at Victoria St.
I'm sure if it was a racist album, the likes of Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis, & George Murray would have told David where to shove his LP!
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I watched that "Five Years" mini-doc that was on Showtime (2014, I think). Good stuff. Thanks for offering a free Showtime trial, Hulu!
 
I've been on record various times about my preference for Lodger out of the Berlin Trilogy. Listening to Low today, which I don't do very often, I'm further bolstered in my feelings. I understand why this first album is so influential, but I can't help feeling like the reverence for it is some kind of passed-down Shock of the New. The tracks on side one are so short they barely have any time to form into anything (outside of Sound & Vision and Always Crashing) or distinguish themselves. Of course Warszawa is a masterwork of atmosphere and feeling, but ultimately the whole of the album is more than the sum of its parts, and makes it hard for me to pick out much that I care for individually. It's similar to how I feel about Kid A vs Amnesiac, though Radiohead's tracks on the former album seem more complete than on Low.

Anyway, I really hope Lodger gets a fresh listen from people post-Bowie's death. There's such a great exploration of texture and rhythm but I also feel the songs, the individual pieces stand up on their own better, even if the whole album doesn't stand as tall in terms of being such a breakthrough experience as Low. And I'd rather listen to My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts than the latter.
 
I listened to Lodger this morning on my way to work, and was surprised how much I liked it (I hadn't listened to it in years). The Kid A-Amnesiac comparison is an apt one, but I tend to disagree with your conclusions. I think the great thing about Low is that the album is more than the sum of its parts, but that the parts themselves are pretty fantastic. Speed of Life, Sound and Vision, Be My Wife, A New Career, and Always Crashing are all top songs, to my ears. And the atmospheric stuff just resonates so well. Kid A is also my favorite Radiohead album, by the way.
 
I do find Lodger more adventurous and perhaps even more experimental than Low, though.
 
I don't think the length of the songs on Side 1 is the problem so much as the problem is that Breaking Glass and What in the World aren't very good. I still love Low, though.
 
^ yeah. fuck outta here with that bullshit. (I mean there's a couple of tracks I'd rate less than a 10, but it's an astonishing album.)

Breaking Glass is fucking dope as hell, that distant, angular guitar, THE FUCKING DRUMS, the razor synths, the insane lyrics. And then it leads straight into What in the World which is heaps of fun.

also, re the whole racism/fascism thing... Cori posted a great article a few pages back about it from a black writer that is really worth a read. But I always thought that he simply had a fascination with Nazi paraphernalia, not that he sympathised with the actual ideology. There's a difference. But maybe I'm being sycophantic.
 
PhilsFan said:
Breaking Glass and What in the World aren't very good.
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Oh man, it hurts me even to see Breaking Glass mentioned with anything but enthusiasm. Everything about that song is gold - the wonky guitar, the absurdist lyrics, the frantic vocals, the piercing snyths...just brilliant all around.

As for Low generally, it's the way it engages you that is really the key to its excellence. The songs on side 1 are weird in a captivated way that might become grating if they were any longer, and the soundscapes on side 2 are almost necessary to calm you back down from whatever the hell coke high Bowie was on during the first half. It's a masterwork of balance.
 
iron yuppie said:
Oh man, it hurts me even to see Breaking Glass mentioned with anything but enthusiasm. Everything about that song is gold - the wonky guitar, the absurdist lyrics, the frantic vocals, the piercing snyths...just brilliant all around.

As for Low generally, it's the way it engages you that is really the key to its excellence. The songs on side 1 are weird in a captivated way that might become grating if they were any longer, and the soundscapes on side 2 are almost necessary to calm you back down from whatever the hell coke high Bowie was on during the first half. It's a masterwork of balance.
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Great minds :) :heart:

I'd like to see some love for Subterraneans - I like that song more than Warszawa, Art Decade or Weeping Wall.
 
I don't dislike those songs, and I'm probably being harder on What in the World than I should be because of its placement in the tracklisting. And I like the lyrics to Breaking Glass, but I've always found that particular song overrated.
 
Subterraneans is without a doubt my favourite Bowie song. Station to Station and "Heroes" complete the top 3.
 
David Bowie Turned Down a Coldplay Collaboration, Saying "It's Not a Very Good Song" | News | Pitchfork

In a new interview with NME, Coldplay's Will Champion said the late David Bowie once turned down their request for a collaboration. The band had written a song with a multi-part harmony, and envisioned Bowie as one of the voices. When Chris Martin wrote Bowie a letter asking him to participate, the response was definitive: "It's not a very good song, is it?"

"He was very discerning," Champion added. "He wouldn't just put his name to anything. I'll give him credit for that."
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:love:
 
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