David Bowie escaped his drug-fueled paranoia in West Berlin and over the next three years recorded a trio of albums known as his “Berlin trilogy.” The first of those was Low, released in 1977.
In my research for these Bowie theme weeks, Low came up again and again as one of Bowie’s finest albums, often topping critics’ and fans’ personal rankings of his best work. So it was with giddy anticipation that I first listened to this record.
I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, but David Bowie’s next album came out just nine months after Young Americans — who the hell can claim such a streak of uninterrupted brilliance right out of the gate?
Station to Station, released in early 1976, served as a transition between the soul music of Young Americans and the “Berlin period” to come. I knew nothing about this album before diving into Bowie’s catalog but it wound up emerging as one of my favorites.
1975’s Young Americans is the eighth David Bowie album I’m featuring in this retrospective, with all eight (plus a few I’ve left out) released over just nine years. And all of this happened 40 years before his death. What a remarkable run.
Young Americans kicked off Bowie’s brief soul period. Bowie got an assist from a young Luther Vandross, who performed on the album and co-wrote one track. Bowie described the album this way: “The squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey.”
David Bowie followed Aladdin Sane with the disappointing Pin Ups, a covers album released the same year (1973). But six months later he returned with a proper album, Diamond Dogs.
This is a quick record with several throwaway connective tracks. The second half features songs from a proposed musical based on George Orwell’s 1984 that Bowie never got to write. The first side features two hits (the title track and today’s SOTD) along with a three-song suite bookended by a song called ‘Sweet Thing.’
In 1973, less than a year after the release of Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie put out another classic album. Aladdin Sane introduced a new Bowie alter ego, which Bowie described as “Ziggy Goes to America.”
The songs were largely written while Bowie toured the U.S., but while the lyrics reflect his take on the states, the music remains rather British. Opening track ‘Watch That Man,’ in particular, is straight-up Rolling Stones. Bowie even underscores that influence by covering ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ later on the album.
Meet Me In Montauk 