Continuing my look at the albums of 1975…

I did a deep dive into David Bowie’s catalog shortly after he died in 2016. Among the albums I covered was 1975’s Young Americans, Bowie’s ninth studio album. This record marked a shift away from his glam rock phase and into what he called “plastic soul.”

Bowie left England to record for the first time in the U.S., in both Philadelphia and New York. While the sessions resulted in plenty of material, only eight tracks ended up on the final tracklist.

The two most notable are the opening title track and the closing song, ‘Fame,’ written with John Lennon. Lennon was in New York when Bowie recorded there, and they collaborated on this song as well as a cover of The Beatles’ ‘Across the Universe.’ That track is rather uninspired and easily the most skippable thing on this album.

The rest is quite good, if a little long-winded. Half of the tracks tops five or six minutes, a little too jammy for my taste. Still, it’s hard to resist Bowie at his most accessible. It might be blasphemous to say, but I prefer this album to any of his experimental Berlin work.