Bowie followed up The Man Who Sold the World with the very different Hunky Dory. Where the former was a hard rock exercise, all grungy guitars, the latter is filled with delicate piano pop.
Hunky Dory is one of two Bowie albums I already owned. I bought it for the three hits — ‘Changes,’ ‘Queen Bitch‘ and ‘Life on Mars?‘ — but never gave the rest of the tracks a very careful listen.
When I decided to take a deep dive into David Bowie’s catalog, I started by Googling every list of his “best albums” I could find. My goal was to come up with a top ten that averaged out those lists.
Bowie released 27 studio albums over the course of his career, but the same dozen or so dominated every list I found. In the end, I settled on 13 albums that I bought (or already owned) and studied for the purposes of these theme weeks.
David Bowie’s second album was, like his debut, titled David Bowie.
Released in 1969, it is most notable for the inclusion of ‘Space Oddity,’ a song that would become a theme of sorts for Bowie. The record was re-released three years later under the title Space Oddity to capitalize on the song’s success.
In January, shortly after David Bowie shuffled off this mortal coil, I promised to take a deep dive into his catalog. For the next three weeks, I’ll do just that.
I’ll get more into my preparation in future posts, but for now I want to kick things off with a single from Bowie’s first album, self-titled and released in 1967.
Liz Phair’s self-titled 2003 album has been ripped by longtime fans and music critics alike as a crass attempt to sell out.
Phair initially turned in a set of tracks produced by Michael Penn, but Capitol Records, as the saying goes, didn’t hear a single. They teamed her up with hit songwriting/production team The Matrix to come up with some more commercial material.
