Continuing my look at the most underrated songs of the 80s (as determined by writer Chris Dalla Riva), #6 on the list is David Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes.’
This song was the first single on Bowie’s 1980 album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and went to #1 in the UK but fell just short of cracking the Hot 100 in the U.S. The video received a fair amount of airplay — which is good, because at the time it was the most expensive ever made. Watching it, that’s hard to believe.
After Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, David Lynch took his longest break between feature films. After a five-year pause, he released the neo-noir psychological horror film Lost Highway.
Partly inspired by the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the film is about a musician (Bill Pullman) who is convicted of murdering his wife (Patricia Arquette). While in prison, he suffers a breakdown and wakes up the next morning as a different person — a young mechanic played by Balthazar Getty. The confused authorities release the man, unsure of how we got there or what happened to the musician.
The movie then follows the mechanic as he gets entangled with a local gangster (Robert Loggia) and the man’s mistress (Arquette, again).
Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1976…
#3 – Station to Station – David Bowie
It turns out I’ve done deep dives on quite a few artists who released albums in 1976. And I’m going to cover most of those records in a single post in a week or so.
But one of those deep dive albums stood out enough to warrant placement in this top five, and that’s David Bowie’s Station to Station.
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.
Continuing the countdown of my favorite 2022 movies…
Best Films of 2022
#9 – Everything Everywhere All at Once
When I first walked out of this magnificent film, almost exactly a year ago, I would have called you crazy if you told me it would be the front-runner for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
I’d point to its sci-fi premise, its kung-fu action scenes, its juvenile humor, its primarily Asian cast, and a dozen other attributes that make this wildly inventive movie the opposite of Oscar bait.
And yet here we are, a year later, on the verge of watching it take home the big prize. Even it goes home empty-handed, the fact that it led the field with 11 nominations in the first place is remarkable.
Meet Me In Montauk 