Album: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars by David Bowie (1972)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Description: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (often shortened to Ziggy Stardust) is a 1972 concept album by English musician David Bowie, which is loosely based on a story of a fictional rock star named Ziggy Stardust. It peaked at number five in the United Kingdom and number 75 in the United States on the Billboard Music Charts.

The album tells the story of Bowie's alter-ego Ziggy Stardust, an alien who visits Earth in the form of a rock star. Bowie created Ziggy Stardust while in New York City promoting Hunky Dory and performed as him on a tour of the United Kingdom, Japan and North America. The album, and the character of Ziggy Stardust, was known for its glam rock influences and themes of sexual exploration and social commentary. It has been consistently considered as one of the greatest albums of all time, with Rolling Stone ranking the record the 35th greatest ever. It was ranked the 20th greatest album ever in a 1997 British survey, the 24th greatest of all time by Q magazine and one of the 100 greatest releases ever by Time magazine.

A concert film of the same name directed by D.A. Pennebaker was released in 1973.

Artist Background: David Robert Jones (8 January 1947, Brixton, London, England - 10 January 2016, New York, USA), better known by his stage name David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, regarded by critics and musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music. During his lifetime, his ... Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Based on 7 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (often shortened to Ziggy Stardust) is a 1972 concept album by English musician David Bowie, which is loosely based on a story of a fictional rock star named Ziggy Stardust. It peaked at number five in the United Kingdom and number 75 in the United States on the Billboard Music Charts.

The album tells the story of Bowie's alter-ego Ziggy Stardust, an alien who visits Earth in the form of a rock star. Bowie created Ziggy Stardust while in New York City promoting Hunky Dory and performed as him on a tour of the United Kingdom, Japan and North America. The album, and the character of Ziggy Stardust, was known for its glam rock influences and themes of sexual exploration and social commentary. It has been consistently considered as one of the greatest albums of all time, with Rolling Stone ranking the record the 35th greatest ever. It was ranked the 20th greatest album ever in a 1997 British survey, the 24th greatest of all time by Q magazine and one of the 100 greatest releases ever by Time magazine.

A concert film of the same name directed by D.A. Pennebaker was released in 1973.

Album: Let's Dance by David Bowie (1983)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Description: Let's Dance is the fifteenth studio album by David Bowie, released in 1983, with co-production by Chic's Nile Rodgers. The title track of the album became one of Bowie's biggest hit singles, reaching number 1 in the UK, the US and various other countries. Further singles included "Modern Love" and "China Girl", which both reached number 2 in the UK. "China Girl" was a new version of a song which Bowie had co-written with Iggy Pop for the latter's 1977 album The Idiot. The album also contains a rerecorded version of the song "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" which had been a minor hit for Bowie a year earlier. Let's Dance is also notable as a stepping stone for the career of the Texas blues guitar virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on it. The album was also released as a limited edition picture disc in 1983. Let's Dance has sold 6 million copies worldwide, making it Bowie's best-selling album.

Artist Background: David Robert Jones (8 January 1947, Brixton, London, England - 10 January 2016, New York, USA), better known by his stage name David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, regarded by critics and musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music. During his lifetime, his ... Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1980s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 8. Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Let's Dance is the fifteenth studio album by David Bowie, released in 1983, with co-production by Chic's Nile Rodgers. The title track of the album became one of Bowie's biggest hit singles, reaching number 1 in the UK, the US and various other countries. Further singles included "Modern Love" and "China Girl", which both reached number 2 in the UK. "China Girl" was a new version of a song which Bowie had co-written with Iggy Pop for the latter's 1977 album The Idiot. The album also contains a rerecorded version of the song "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" which had been a minor hit for Bowie a year earlier. Let's Dance is also notable as a stepping stone for the career of the Texas blues guitar virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on it. The album was also released as a limited edition picture disc in 1983. Let's Dance has sold 6 million copies worldwide, making it Bowie's best-selling album.

Album: 50th Birthday Concert by David Bowie
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, Live, RCA


Album: Changesbowie by David Bowie (1990)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Compilation, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 4. Based on 1 votes


Album: Young Americans by David Bowie (1975)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Album

Description: During the American tour promoting the dystopian art rock of 1974's Diamond Dogs, David Bowie fell hard for the gloriously smooth sound of Philly soul. So he went right to the source to make Young Americans, with a backing group featuring Luther Vandross. It’s a slick, tuneful pop-R&B record given extra depth by some of Bowie's most pointed lyrics. The gospel-tinged title track and the needling funk of "Fame" (with lyrics and vocals by John Lennon) are among Bowie's most exciting, impassioned performances.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, Parlophone UK

Additional Context: Rating score: 9. Based on 3 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

During the American tour promoting the dystopian art rock of 1974's Diamond Dogs, David Bowie fell hard for the gloriously smooth sound of Philly soul. So he went right to the source to make Young Americans, with a backing group featuring Luther Vandross. It’s a slick, tuneful pop-R&B record given extra depth by some of Bowie's most pointed lyrics. The gospel-tinged title track and the needling funk of "Fame" (with lyrics and vocals by John Lennon) are among Bowie's most exciting, impassioned performances.

Album: The Singles Collection by David Bowie (1993)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Compilation

Description: When David Bowie released Station to Station in 1976, he hit a new commercial pinnacle: It would soon become his second album in a row to reach the Top 10 on both sides of the pond. But from a mental-health standpoint, Bowie was at an all-time low. Upon moving to LA in 1975 to film his starring role in Nicolas Roeg’s art-house classic, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie’s recreational cocaine use had developed into a full-blown snowstorm, plunging him into an all-consuming paranoia that manifested itself in a notoriously extreme diet of red peppers and milk, dramatic weight loss and an obsession with the occult. Given his precarious condition at the time, Bowie infamously claimed that he had no recollection of making Station to Station. But in reality, he savvily turned his diminished physical and psychological state into a new persona: The Thin White Duke. Pale, skeletal, yet still untouchably stylish, Bowie reinvented himself as the ghost of a pop star.

Though Station to Station carries over the soul and funk influences of the preceding Young Americans, this is an album possessed by a more haunted and sinister energy. Its staggering 10-minute title track is the equivalent of opening a door and being greeted by a 100-foot-high brick wall, as an ominous swell of electronics gives way to an anvil-pounding beat that—while not quite heavy metal—is still crushing enough to have inspired a Melvins cover version many years later. But partway through, the song suddenly transforms from doomy dirge to rapturous disco, effectively encapsulating Station to Station’s uncanny balance of drug-addled delusion and futurist epiphany. Station to Station may have been born in a cloud of LA excess, but Bowie’s ear was already keying into the avant-rock experimentation flourishing in Germany. And if he wasn’t yet fully incorporating the electronic aesthetic of bands like Kraftwerk and Harmonia, their machine-like precision informed the funky-yet-frosty allure of songs like “Golden Years” and “Stay”.

Perhaps the most fascinating attribute of Station to Station is the way it makes organic instrumentation sound unearthly—“TVC15” foregrounds the playful piano-runs of the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan and Bowie’s own free-ranging sax-work, yet the song’s steely rhythmic pulse, cryptic communiques and robotic chorus incantations sound like they’re beaming in from another planet. But even the album’s two side-closing ballads—the elegant “Word on a Wing” and a dramatic reading of the Nina Simone signature “Wild Is the Wind”—convey the same message as the album’s more outre excursions: Bowie was rapidly losing interest in traditional rock music and rock culture in general, and in order to escape its temptations and trappings, he needed to make records that would position him firmly outside that world. “The European canon is here!” he announced on Station to Station’s title track. His next move was to book himself a transatlantic flight back to the Old World and fulfill that promise.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Compilation, Parlophone UK

When David Bowie released Station to Station in 1976, he hit a new commercial pinnacle: It would soon become his second album in a row to reach the Top 10 on both sides of the pond. But from a mental-health standpoint, Bowie was at an all-time low. Upon moving to LA in 1975 to film his starring role in Nicolas Roeg’s art-house classic, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie’s recreational cocaine use had developed into a full-blown snowstorm, plunging him into an all-consuming paranoia that manifested itself in a notoriously extreme diet of red peppers and milk, dramatic weight loss and an obsession with the occult. Given his precarious condition at the time, Bowie infamously claimed that he had no recollection of making Station to Station. But in reality, he savvily turned his diminished physical and psychological state into a new persona: The Thin White Duke. Pale, skeletal, yet still untouchably stylish, Bowie reinvented himself as the ghost of a pop star.

Though Station to Station carries over the soul and funk influences of the preceding Young Americans, this is an album possessed by a more haunted and sinister energy. Its staggering 10-minute title track is the equivalent of opening a door and being greeted by a 100-foot-high brick wall, as an ominous swell of electronics gives way to an anvil-pounding beat that—while not quite heavy metal—is still crushing enough to have inspired a Melvins cover version many years later. But partway through, the song suddenly transforms from doomy dirge to rapturous disco, effectively encapsulating Station to Station’s uncanny balance of drug-addled delusion and futurist epiphany. Station to Station may have been born in a cloud of LA excess, but Bowie’s ear was already keying into the avant-rock experimentation flourishing in Germany. And if he wasn’t yet fully incorporating the electronic aesthetic of bands like Kraftwerk and Harmonia, their machine-like precision informed the funky-yet-frosty allure of songs like “Golden Years” and “Stay”.

Perhaps the most fascinating attribute of Station to Station is the way it makes organic instrumentation sound unearthly—“TVC15” foregrounds the playful piano-runs of the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan and Bowie’s own free-ranging sax-work, yet the song’s steely rhythmic pulse, cryptic communiques and robotic chorus incantations sound like they’re beaming in from another planet. But even the album’s two side-closing ballads—the elegant “Word on a Wing” and a dramatic reading of the Nina Simone signature “Wild Is the Wind”—convey the same message as the album’s more outre excursions: Bowie was rapidly losing interest in traditional rock music and rock culture in general, and in order to escape its temptations and trappings, he needed to make records that would position him firmly outside that world. “The European canon is here!” he announced on Station to Station’s title track. His next move was to book himself a transatlantic flight back to the Old World and fulfill that promise.

Album: The Man Who Sold the World by David Bowie (1970)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: MMRX
Format: Album

Description: The first thing that comes to mind when Tony Visconti thinks back to the making of The Man Who Sold the World—his second collaboration with David Bowie—is the band and their partners and wives crammed together in a flat at Haddon Hall, a Victorian mansion in South London. “There were seven of us and only two bedrooms,” the producer, who also played bass on the record, tells Apple Music. “People were sleeping all over the place: on floors or upstairs in this little gallery. We had a rehearsal space in the wine cellar, and that’s where we put the drum kit and the amps.” The result—despite Bowie’s third album being a commercial disappointment upon its release in 1970—has come to be regarded as the start of a classic phase for the king of reinvention. Featuring the first appearances of guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Woody Woodmansey in his band, The Man Who Sold the World mixed hard-rock grooves with a theatrical swagger—and set a blueprint that Bowie would hone as the decade progressed. “We now know it was the beginning of an idea that David didn’t stop exploring,” says Visconti. “I think this album gave birth to Ziggy Stardust. That was the sound that we were getting on The Man Who Sold the World. We were almost there. The seed was planted in all of our minds to go in that direction.” 
To commemorate its 50th anniversary, Bowie’s third album is here reissued under its original intended title, Metrobolist, with a new mix by Visconti. Revisiting the album’s nine tracks gave the producer the opportunity to push sonic boundaries further than the group’s finances allowed in 1970. “The whole object of remixing an album that old is to use new technology and make it sound fantastic, with tools that we didn’t have in the old days,” he says. “But I can’t forget the ethics we had in the old days around how things should sound.” The only song that remains untouched on the new mix is the atmospheric ballad “After All”, both because Visconti believed it couldn’t be improved and because he couldn’t locate the original tapes. “David has a vault somewhere and nobody can find it,” he teases. “He must have hundreds and hundreds of multi-tracks.” Here, Visconti talks us through reworking The Man Who Sold the World, one song at a time. 
The Width of a Circle
“This was probably the only song in our repertoire that we had experienced playing in front of an audience. It felt like an opener. There are three distinct parts of this song. We were playing the front part live, then the middle part where it has that interlude was part of a jam. We were never satisfied with the way this song originally ended, so I remember we said, ‘Let's do a part two.’ Which is that little ethereal part in the middle, and then it goes into that boogie thing for the whole third part. That was invented on the spot. We jammed that for about an hour or two, and when we finished, we said, ‘Oh my god, this is the way it's supposed to be. This is the way we should have played it on stage.’” 
All the Madmen
“I'd say half the album was rehearsed and the other half was created on the spot. ‘All the Madmen’ was created on the spot in the studio. After David put down the 12-string guitar and a rudimentary vocal, Woody, Mick and I overdubbed our parts. That's the way The Beatles were doing it at the time. It turned out to be really, really successful. It’s got a lot of texture in it—more than in ‘The Width of a Circle’—and it really sounds like a grand production. As a band, we were all on the same level and there was certainly a musical chemistry.” 
Black Country Rock
“‘Black Country Rock’ was a jam. We didn't have enough material to record and we had to go in and make an album. We started jamming on those chords, and then I played some funky stuff on the bass and Woody got funky. We put the whole track down and David and the four of us looked at each other: 'What is it? What did we just create?' And because it was funky, somebody said, ‘It’s kind of Black.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, but it's country.’ Then ‘But it's rock.’ And David got out his notepad and I swear he wrote the lyrics on the spot.” 
After All
“This was another song that was done à la carte. Again, David did his acoustic guitar and vocal and then we just had to figure out what was going to go on it afterwards. It took a bit of time. It was recorded in a whole day, which was a luxury for one song, because in those days you usually did two or three songs in a session. It was piecemeal. There were recorders on it and I played three basses. Slowly, the song built up, and we loved it in the end. And again, David struggled to write the lyrics. He had a ‘la, la, la’ lyric for about a day or two before he finally went in and did the proper lyrics.” 
Running Gun Blues
“David wrote this on his 12-string and we recorded it live as a band. And it was a good idea of his: a war protest song about Vietnam, I think. I could be totally wrong, but that's what I got from it. It was recorded very, very swiftly. We were good musicians, and I think we got that whole thing down within a few hours: vocals, all the overdubs and the Moog synthesiser. It was probably one of the ones we’d rehearsed in the wine cellar at Beckenham, so we knew the song.” 
Saviour Machine
“This started out as an earlier song called ‘Ching-a-Ling’ when David was in a group with his former girlfriend Hermione Farthingale. They had this folky song and the middle part of that is the basis of 'Saviour Machine'. It’s a far cry from ‘Ching-a-Ling' to 'Saviour Machine', which is a very, very heavy subject matter. The nice thing about this song is that I was a young jazz musician from New York and I introduced a jazz bolero beat in there. Woody and Mick looked at each other, having only heard of Ravel's ‘Boléro’. But I said, ‘No, there's a funky way of playing a bolero in all that.’ And we jammed on that. Woody and Mick were so fast to pick it up. I'm really proud of how this song evolved. I consider it a masterpiece. It's a really great track.” 
She Shook Me Cold
“Mick said, ‘If I’m going to be in a band with you, you’ve got to play like Jack Bruce.’ So he sat me down and he gave me an education in Jack Bruce's style. I was like any other bass player in those days—I could play funky, I could play rock and all that, but what Jack Bruce did was play lead bass. He played the bass like it was a cello with fingers flying all over the place. So I said, ‘Okay, I got it.’ Besides the heavy chords on the beginning and the end, ‘She Shook Me Cold’ was just a crazy jam. I’ll tell you now, we didn't do that live. We had to do that part separately. But god, it was fun to do and to be so free and liberal. Nowadays, you have to play very simply and carefully, but we could play with wild abandon back in those days. And that's an example of how far out we got permission to be in those days.” 
The Man Who Sold the World
“David wrote this at home and it was a very haunting track. We were very impressed by it and we all had a good, deep feeling about it. We weren't quite sure what he was talking about in the beginning, and he explained it to us. I thought it was an intriguing title. It was another one that didn't take very long, because, again, we’d rehearsed it and learned it back in Beckenham. The ending was David and Mick and I doing that whole choir with the three of us. I was the low voice and Mick is somewhere in the middle and David's doing the very high stuff. That took a bit of a long time, but it was just so much fun. Mick played a lot of subtle guitar work, and I made sure it was heard on the new mix.” 
The Supermen
“I remember the image for this. David said, ‘Think of a cyclops and he’s stomping with his big feet and shaking the ground and he's coming at you with his horn and his one eye in the middle.’ David often had images for the way the sound should be. He would give us visual images. We were channelling classical, like Wagner or Mahler. We wanted a big symphonic sound. It’s really quite impressive.”

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, MMRX

Additional Context: Rating score: 9. Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

The first thing that comes to mind when Tony Visconti thinks back to the making of The Man Who Sold the World—his second collaboration with David Bowie—is the band and their partners and wives crammed together in a flat at Haddon Hall, a Victorian mansion in South London. “There were seven of us and only two bedrooms,” the producer, who also played bass on the record, tells Apple Music. “People were sleeping all over the place: on floors or upstairs in this little gallery. We had a rehearsal space in the wine cellar, and that’s where we put the drum kit and the amps.” The result—despite Bowie’s third album being a commercial disappointment upon its release in 1970—has come to be regarded as the start of a classic phase for the king of reinvention. Featuring the first appearances of guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Woody Woodmansey in his band, The Man Who Sold the World mixed hard-rock grooves with a theatrical swagger—and set a blueprint that Bowie would hone as the decade progressed. “We now know it was the beginning of an idea that David didn’t stop exploring,” says Visconti. “I think this album gave birth to Ziggy Stardust. That was the sound that we were getting on The Man Who Sold the World. We were almost there. The seed was planted in all of our minds to go in that direction.” 
To commemorate its 50th anniversary, Bowie’s third album is here reissued under its original intended title, Metrobolist, with a new mix by Visconti. Revisiting the album’s nine tracks gave the producer the opportunity to push sonic boundaries further than the group’s finances allowed in 1970. “The whole object of remixing an album that old is to use new technology and make it sound fantastic, with tools that we didn’t have in the old days,” he says. “But I can’t forget the ethics we had in the old days around how things should sound.” The only song that remains untouched on the new mix is the atmospheric ballad “After All”, both because Visconti believed it couldn’t be improved and because he couldn’t locate the original tapes. “David has a vault somewhere and nobody can find it,” he teases. “He must have hundreds and hundreds of multi-tracks.” Here, Visconti talks us through reworking The Man Who Sold the World, one song at a time. 
The Width of a Circle
“This was probably the only song in our repertoire that we had experienced playing in front of an audience. It felt like an opener. There are three distinct parts of this song. We were playing the front part live, then the middle part where it has that interlude was part of a jam. We were never satisfied with the way this song originally ended, so I remember we said, ‘Let's do a part two.’ Which is that little ethereal part in the middle, and then it goes into that boogie thing for the whole third part. That was invented on the spot. We jammed that for about an hour or two, and when we finished, we said, ‘Oh my god, this is the way it's supposed to be. This is the way we should have played it on stage.’” 
All the Madmen
“I'd say half the album was rehearsed and the other half was created on the spot. ‘All the Madmen’ was created on the spot in the studio. After David put down the 12-string guitar and a rudimentary vocal, Woody, Mick and I overdubbed our parts. That's the way The Beatles were doing it at the time. It turned out to be really, really successful. It’s got a lot of texture in it—more than in ‘The Width of a Circle’—and it really sounds like a grand production. As a band, we were all on the same level and there was certainly a musical chemistry.” 
Black Country Rock
“‘Black Country Rock’ was a jam. We didn't have enough material to record and we had to go in and make an album. We started jamming on those chords, and then I played some funky stuff on the bass and Woody got funky. We put the whole track down and David and the four of us looked at each other: 'What is it? What did we just create?' And because it was funky, somebody said, ‘It’s kind of Black.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, but it's country.’ Then ‘But it's rock.’ And David got out his notepad and I swear he wrote the lyrics on the spot.” 
After All
“This was another song that was done à la carte. Again, David did his acoustic guitar and vocal and then we just had to figure out what was going to go on it afterwards. It took a bit of time. It was recorded in a whole day, which was a luxury for one song, because in those days you usually did two or three songs in a session. It was piecemeal. There were recorders on it and I played three basses. Slowly, the song built up, and we loved it in the end. And again, David struggled to write the lyrics. He had a ‘la, la, la’ lyric for about a day or two before he finally went in and did the proper lyrics.” 
Running Gun Blues
“David wrote this on his 12-string and we recorded it live as a band. And it was a good idea of his: a war protest song about Vietnam, I think. I could be totally wrong, but that's what I got from it. It was recorded very, very swiftly. We were good musicians, and I think we got that whole thing down within a few hours: vocals, all the overdubs and the Moog synthesiser. It was probably one of the ones we’d rehearsed in the wine cellar at Beckenham, so we knew the song.” 
Saviour Machine
“This started out as an earlier song called ‘Ching-a-Ling’ when David was in a group with his former girlfriend Hermione Farthingale. They had this folky song and the middle part of that is the basis of 'Saviour Machine'. It’s a far cry from ‘Ching-a-Ling' to 'Saviour Machine', which is a very, very heavy subject matter. The nice thing about this song is that I was a young jazz musician from New York and I introduced a jazz bolero beat in there. Woody and Mick looked at each other, having only heard of Ravel's ‘Boléro’. But I said, ‘No, there's a funky way of playing a bolero in all that.’ And we jammed on that. Woody and Mick were so fast to pick it up. I'm really proud of how this song evolved. I consider it a masterpiece. It's a really great track.” 
She Shook Me Cold
“Mick said, ‘If I’m going to be in a band with you, you’ve got to play like Jack Bruce.’ So he sat me down and he gave me an education in Jack Bruce's style. I was like any other bass player in those days—I could play funky, I could play rock and all that, but what Jack Bruce did was play lead bass. He played the bass like it was a cello with fingers flying all over the place. So I said, ‘Okay, I got it.’ Besides the heavy chords on the beginning and the end, ‘She Shook Me Cold’ was just a crazy jam. I’ll tell you now, we didn't do that live. We had to do that part separately. But god, it was fun to do and to be so free and liberal. Nowadays, you have to play very simply and carefully, but we could play with wild abandon back in those days. And that's an example of how far out we got permission to be in those days.” 
The Man Who Sold the World
“David wrote this at home and it was a very haunting track. We were very impressed by it and we all had a good, deep feeling about it. We weren't quite sure what he was talking about in the beginning, and he explained it to us. I thought it was an intriguing title. It was another one that didn't take very long, because, again, we’d rehearsed it and learned it back in Beckenham. The ending was David and Mick and I doing that whole choir with the three of us. I was the low voice and Mick is somewhere in the middle and David's doing the very high stuff. That took a bit of a long time, but it was just so much fun. Mick played a lot of subtle guitar work, and I made sure it was heard on the new mix.” 
The Supermen
“I remember the image for this. David said, ‘Think of a cyclops and he’s stomping with his big feet and shaking the ground and he's coming at you with his horn and his one eye in the middle.’ David often had images for the way the sound should be. He would give us visual images. We were channelling classical, like Wagner or Mahler. We wanted a big symphonic sound. It’s really quite impressive.”

Album: The Platinum Collection by David Bowie (2009)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Compilation

Description: When David Bowie released Station to Station in 1976, he hit a new commercial pinnacle: It would soon become his second album in a row to reach the Top 10 on both sides of the pond. But from a mental-health standpoint, Bowie was at an all-time low. Upon moving to LA in 1975 to film his starring role in Nicolas Roeg’s art-house classic, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie’s recreational cocaine use had developed into a full-blown snowstorm, plunging him into an all-consuming paranoia that manifested itself in a notoriously extreme diet of red peppers and milk, dramatic weight loss and an obsession with the occult. Given his precarious condition at the time, Bowie infamously claimed that he had no recollection of making Station to Station. But in reality, he savvily turned his diminished physical and psychological state into a new persona: The Thin White Duke. Pale, skeletal, yet still untouchably stylish, Bowie reinvented himself as the ghost of a pop star.

Though Station to Station carries over the soul and funk influences of the preceding Young Americans, this is an album possessed by a more haunted and sinister energy. Its staggering 10-minute title track is the equivalent of opening a door and being greeted by a 100-foot-high brick wall, as an ominous swell of electronics gives way to an anvil-pounding beat that—while not quite heavy metal—is still crushing enough to have inspired a Melvins cover version many years later. But partway through, the song suddenly transforms from doomy dirge to rapturous disco, effectively encapsulating Station to Station’s uncanny balance of drug-addled delusion and futurist epiphany. Station to Station may have been born in a cloud of LA excess, but Bowie’s ear was already keying into the avant-rock experimentation flourishing in Germany. And if he wasn’t yet fully incorporating the electronic aesthetic of bands like Kraftwerk and Harmonia, their machine-like precision informed the funky-yet-frosty allure of songs like “Golden Years” and “Stay”.

Perhaps the most fascinating attribute of Station to Station is the way it makes organic instrumentation sound unearthly—“TVC15” foregrounds the playful piano-runs of the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan and Bowie’s own free-ranging sax-work, yet the song’s steely rhythmic pulse, cryptic communiques and robotic chorus incantations sound like they’re beaming in from another planet. But even the album’s two side-closing ballads—the elegant “Word on a Wing” and a dramatic reading of the Nina Simone signature “Wild Is the Wind”—convey the same message as the album’s more outre excursions: Bowie was rapidly losing interest in traditional rock music and rock culture in general, and in order to escape its temptations and trappings, he needed to make records that would position him firmly outside that world. “The European canon is here!” he announced on Station to Station’s title track. His next move was to book himself a transatlantic flight back to the Old World and fulfill that promise.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2000s, Compilation, Parlophone UK

Additional Context: Rating score: 9. Based on 1 votes

Album: Best of Bowie by David Bowie (2002)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Rhino
Format: Compilation

Description: These 20 songs cover radio high points of the great art rocker’s career, almost too quickly summing up his myriad stylistic shifts. Then again, no 20 tracks will be enough for anyone who’s drawn to more than a few of those collected here; that’s where the fun work of digging through Bowie’s album catalog comes in. The route through his history – post-showtunes pop (“Changes”), glam hard rock (“Suffragette City,” “Rebel Rebel”), “plastic soul” (“Fame”), punk-era avant-garde (“Heroes”), ’80s polish (“Modern Love”), and so on – reveals emotional commonalities that ultimately transcend image games, as fun as those may be. Bowie’s ability to draw and intrigue an audience via his own obsessions is a gift that, in the end, makes his greatest work both accessible and challenging in the most entertaining way.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2000s, Compilation, Rhino

Additional Context: Rating score: 10. Based on 1 votes


These 20 songs cover radio high points of the great art rocker’s career, almost too quickly summing up his myriad stylistic shifts. Then again, no 20 tracks will be enough for anyone who’s drawn to more than a few of those collected here; that’s where the fun work of digging through Bowie’s album catalog comes in. The route through his history – post-showtunes pop (“Changes”), glam hard rock (“Suffragette City,” “Rebel Rebel”), “plastic soul” (“Fame”), punk-era avant-garde (“Heroes”), ’80s polish (“Modern Love”), and so on – reveals emotional commonalities that ultimately transcend image games, as fun as those may be. Bowie’s ability to draw and intrigue an audience via his own obsessions is a gift that, in the end, makes his greatest work both accessible and challenging in the most entertaining way.

Album: Aladdin Sane by David Bowie (1973)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Epic
Record Label: EMI Catalogue
Format: Album

Description: By the dawn of the 1970s, David Bowie had chased fame in so many different ways that he had to invent a fake rock star to become a real one. With 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, he introduced the androgynous alien alter ego that confirmed glam rock’s status as the new Beatlemania, and granted Bowie the king-making powers to revive the careers of then-unsung heroes like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Mott the Hoople. Of course, the natural response to a blockbuster hit is to quickly crank out a sequel that delivers more of the same, and Aladdin Sane obliged—up to a point. Written primarily during his first major US tour in 1972 and released the following year, Aladdin Sane was conceived as “Ziggy goes to America”—a stranger-in-a-strange land travelogue that bottles up all the surging euphoria and creeping paranoia of the experience.

Though it shot to No. 1 in the UK, and became his first album to crack the Top 20 in the US, Aladdin Sane occupies a peculiar place in the Bowie canon. It’s arguably more famous for its iconic cover image—an eternal source of inspiration for runway shows and Halloween costumes—than its contents. Aside from the jackboot stomper “The Jean Genie”, the songs on Aladdin Sane are largely excluded from classic-rock radio playlists and myth-making compilations like ChangesOneBowie. (The fact that rollicking opener “Watch That Man” isn’t widely considered a glam standard on par with “Ziggy Stardust” and “Suffragette City” is a grave injustice.) But while it comes loaded with some of guitarist Mick Ronson’s toughest and heartiest riffs, Aladdin Sane displaces the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am swagger of its predecessor with ominous portraits of social unrest (”Panic in Detroit”) and faded celebrity (“Cracked Actor”) that provide a looking-glass glimpse into this turbulent moment for Bowie and America at large.

Just three months after Aladdin Sane’s release, Bowie famously staged his rock ’n’ roll suicide at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, announcing the demise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spider From Mars to the shock of thousands of weeping fans. But after hearing Aladdin Sane’s ghostly title track, they shouldn’t have been so surprised. Featuring an astonishing free-jazz piano solo from Mike Garson, the song clearly communicates Bowie’s desire to break free—not just from glam hysteria, but from rock ’n’ roll itself.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Epic, 1970s, Album, EMI Catalogue

Additional Context: Based on 5 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

By the dawn of the 1970s, David Bowie had chased fame in so many different ways that he had to invent a fake rock star to become a real one. With 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, he introduced the androgynous alien alter ego that confirmed glam rock’s status as the new Beatlemania, and granted Bowie the king-making powers to revive the careers of then-unsung heroes like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Mott the Hoople. Of course, the natural response to a blockbuster hit is to quickly crank out a sequel that delivers more of the same, and Aladdin Sane obliged—up to a point. Written primarily during his first major US tour in 1972 and released the following year, Aladdin Sane was conceived as “Ziggy goes to America”—a stranger-in-a-strange land travelogue that bottles up all the surging euphoria and creeping paranoia of the experience.

Though it shot to No. 1 in the UK, and became his first album to crack the Top 20 in the US, Aladdin Sane occupies a peculiar place in the Bowie canon. It’s arguably more famous for its iconic cover image—an eternal source of inspiration for runway shows and Halloween costumes—than its contents. Aside from the jackboot stomper “The Jean Genie”, the songs on Aladdin Sane are largely excluded from classic-rock radio playlists and myth-making compilations like ChangesOneBowie. (The fact that rollicking opener “Watch That Man” isn’t widely considered a glam standard on par with “Ziggy Stardust” and “Suffragette City” is a grave injustice.) But while it comes loaded with some of guitarist Mick Ronson’s toughest and heartiest riffs, Aladdin Sane displaces the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am swagger of its predecessor with ominous portraits of social unrest (”Panic in Detroit”) and faded celebrity (“Cracked Actor”) that provide a looking-glass glimpse into this turbulent moment for Bowie and America at large.

Just three months after Aladdin Sane’s release, Bowie famously staged his rock ’n’ roll suicide at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, announcing the demise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spider From Mars to the shock of thousands of weeping fans. But after hearing Aladdin Sane’s ghostly title track, they shouldn’t have been so surprised. Featuring an astonishing free-jazz piano solo from Mike Garson, the song clearly communicates Bowie’s desire to break free—not just from glam hysteria, but from rock ’n’ roll itself.

Album: Brilliant Adventure [1992–2001] by David Bowie (2021)
Genre: Rock
Record Label: RCA
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, 2020s, Compilation, RCA


Album: Earthling by David Bowie (1997)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Album, Parlophone UK

Additional Context: Rating score: 7. Based on 1 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: Never Let Me Down by David Bowie (1987)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1980s, Album, Parlophone UK

Additional Context: Rating score: 7. Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: Sound + Vision by David Bowie (1989)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1980s, Compilation, Parlophone UK


Album: Low by David Bowie (1977)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Description: The first instalment of David Bowie’s famed Berlin Trilogy actually wasn’t birthed in Berlin. After barely surviving the druggy LA hedonism that birthed 1976’s Station to Station, Bowie vowed to get clean and stowed himself away in a chateau studio in northern France, with fellow addict Iggy Pop in tow. The detoxing duo recorded Pop’s 1977 solo debut, The Idiot, which featured a collision of seedy, urbane rock and cold, mechanistic rhythms—a reflection of Bowie’s growing obsession with the electronic-oriented sounds coming out of Germany at the time. And with his own next record, Bowie immersed himself so deeply in that realm, he practically disappeared into it.

Released in 1977, and recorded with producer Tony Visconti and fellow glam survivor Brian Eno, Low closely mirrors the former Roxy Music figurehead’s own transition from eccentric art-rock artist to ambient-music icon. An exemplar of how the vinyl format could influence aesthetic choices, Low is divided into two distinct, oppositional sides: The first is made of up of compact, synth-shocked pop songs; the second is a suite of abstract ambient pieces that merge the worlds of electronic experimentation, opera and neoclassical composition.

It’s easy to see Low’s first half as a logical extension of Station to Station’s icy avant-funk. But the buzzing keyboards, chromatic leads and industrial-strength beats of songs like “Breaking Glass” and “What in the World” push Bowie far away from the American soul music that initially inspired him to trade in his glitter for grooves. And for all its radical sound design and cryptic lyrical fragments, Low’s Side A offers some of Bowie’s purest expressions of emotion, be it the irrepressible “Sound and Vision” or the sorrowful “Always Crashing in the Same Car”, both of which spin traditional mid-century radio into other-worldly transmissions.

If Low’s first act offers a glimpse of a totally wired future, its meditative second half is firmly grounded in the moment of its creation. Inspired by Bowie’s walks through the battle-scarred post-war cityscapes of Warsaw and West Berlin (where the album was eventually completed and mixed), Low’s Side B is a haunted aftershock of the 20th century’s darkest hour: In the isolated moments when Bowie’s vocals do appear—via the indecipherable incantations that complement the foggy drones of “Warszawa”, the Steve Reich-like percolations of “Weeping Wall” or the closing sax-speckled synthphony “Subterraneans”—he isn’t so much singing to his audience as praying for humanity.

Low’s unconventional nature initially prompted RCA Records to delay its release by several months, as the label feared the record would flop commercially. But its influence immediately filtered down to the post-punky synth-pop acts that would dominate the British weeklies into the 1980s, andLow’s legacy would continue to proliferate decades later, when alt-rock auteurs like Trent Reznor, James Murphy and St Vincent embraced its forward-thinking fusion of ruptured rhythms, idiosyncratic melody and dissonant texture. After spending the better part of the 1970s using his body as a blank canvas to develop new personae, Low halted that ceaseless cycle of visual reinvention with an act of self-negation, as Bowie completely surrendered to the impressionistic power of sound. And as he dug his heels deeper into his new Berlin base, the line between vanguard pop star and avant-garde explorer would continue to blur in fascinating and unpredictable ways.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Based on 3 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

The first instalment of David Bowie’s famed Berlin Trilogy actually wasn’t birthed in Berlin. After barely surviving the druggy LA hedonism that birthed 1976’s Station to Station, Bowie vowed to get clean and stowed himself away in a chateau studio in northern France, with fellow addict Iggy Pop in tow. The detoxing duo recorded Pop’s 1977 solo debut, The Idiot, which featured a collision of seedy, urbane rock and cold, mechanistic rhythms—a reflection of Bowie’s growing obsession with the electronic-oriented sounds coming out of Germany at the time. And with his own next record, Bowie immersed himself so deeply in that realm, he practically disappeared into it.

Released in 1977, and recorded with producer Tony Visconti and fellow glam survivor Brian Eno, Low closely mirrors the former Roxy Music figurehead’s own transition from eccentric art-rock artist to ambient-music icon. An exemplar of how the vinyl format could influence aesthetic choices, Low is divided into two distinct, oppositional sides: The first is made of up of compact, synth-shocked pop songs; the second is a suite of abstract ambient pieces that merge the worlds of electronic experimentation, opera and neoclassical composition.

It’s easy to see Low’s first half as a logical extension of Station to Station’s icy avant-funk. But the buzzing keyboards, chromatic leads and industrial-strength beats of songs like “Breaking Glass” and “What in the World” push Bowie far away from the American soul music that initially inspired him to trade in his glitter for grooves. And for all its radical sound design and cryptic lyrical fragments, Low’s Side A offers some of Bowie’s purest expressions of emotion, be it the irrepressible “Sound and Vision” or the sorrowful “Always Crashing in the Same Car”, both of which spin traditional mid-century radio into other-worldly transmissions.

If Low’s first act offers a glimpse of a totally wired future, its meditative second half is firmly grounded in the moment of its creation. Inspired by Bowie’s walks through the battle-scarred post-war cityscapes of Warsaw and West Berlin (where the album was eventually completed and mixed), Low’s Side B is a haunted aftershock of the 20th century’s darkest hour: In the isolated moments when Bowie’s vocals do appear—via the indecipherable incantations that complement the foggy drones of “Warszawa”, the Steve Reich-like percolations of “Weeping Wall” or the closing sax-speckled synthphony “Subterraneans”—he isn’t so much singing to his audience as praying for humanity.

Low’s unconventional nature initially prompted RCA Records to delay its release by several months, as the label feared the record would flop commercially. But its influence immediately filtered down to the post-punky synth-pop acts that would dominate the British weeklies into the 1980s, andLow’s legacy would continue to proliferate decades later, when alt-rock auteurs like Trent Reznor, James Murphy and St Vincent embraced its forward-thinking fusion of ruptured rhythms, idiosyncratic melody and dissonant texture. After spending the better part of the 1970s using his body as a blank canvas to develop new personae, Low halted that ceaseless cycle of visual reinvention with an act of self-negation, as Bowie completely surrendered to the impressionistic power of sound. And as he dug his heels deeper into his new Berlin base, the line between vanguard pop star and avant-garde explorer would continue to blur in fascinating and unpredictable ways.

Album: Tonight by David Bowie (1984)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1980s, Album, Parlophone UK

Additional Context: Rating score: 8. Based on 3 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: The Buddha of Suburbia by David Bowie (1993)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 7. Based on 1 votes


Album: Early On (1964-1966) by David Bowie (1991)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Compilation, RCA


Album: Space Oddity by David Bowie (2004)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: UMC (Universal Music Catalogue)
Format: Album

Description: Tony Visconti always listens to Space Oddity, the first album he produced for David Bowie, with trepidation. “I hear things,” he tells Apple Music. “Things that if I could’ve done them better, I would have done them better. The music is great, but the mixing was really bad. I was a novice—a decent musician, but not very good at running production.” That’s why remixing the album for its 50th anniversary was something of a catharsis. He sweated over the process in his New York studio, where a framed drawing of Bowie hangs over the spot where rock’s great chameleon would sit while the pair worked on his final albums, The Next Day and Blackstar. “I have this second chance to do something right about that album, and I’m terrified that I might do something wrong,” Visconti says. “So, during the mixes, I turned to that space quite a bit and I said, ‘Well, what do you think, David?’ Not that he answered me, but I just feel like he’s never really left us.” The duo’s bond was strong enough that Visconti can feel confident Bowie would approve of the job he’s done here. He’s excavated what he calls “hidden treasures”—notes, sounds, vocals—that had been buried in the original mix, and created a brighter, bolder Space Oddity. Here, he guides us through it, track by track. 
Space Oddity (2019 Mix)
“[In 1969] I couldn't see the wood for the trees. We had just had all these orbits around the Earth, something that was in the news every day. All I saw was David cashing in on that. I called it a cheap shot. Right to his face. We were brutally honest with each other. That's what made us good friends. The job that Gus Dudgeon [the engineer who stepped in to produce the track] did was fantastic. I tried to bow out after that. I said to David, ‘I suppose you’re going to stay with Gus.’ And he said, ‘No, I've got that out of the way. Now I can make the album that I want to make.’ I think I’ve made it sparkle and explode a bit more. I think the mix actually makes your body move. Like, you don't realise that the drummer and the bass player were really grooving—the kick drum was always buried in the original mix.” 
Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed (2019 Mix)
“[David] was in a good space when he wrote this. He wasn't afraid to be politically incorrect. And he would really go for the jugular. [On 1967’s David Bowie], he wanted to be in show business. He was thinking about himself at 40 or 50 years old—king of the musical theatre. He told me that. I asked him, in recent years, ‘What would you have done if you weren't a rock star?’ He goes, ‘Oh, I’d do music hall. I'd be writing musicals.’ But on this album, he was speaking for his generation. He was 22 years old, and he was feeling it like the rest of us were feeling it. This was the first song we recorded for the album and it was quite messy, really loosey-goosey playing. I don't mind that, but it made the original mix harder to do because the levels were jumping and there are a few blatant errors. So I tightened up the arrangement and was able to control the dynamics a bit more. There's some brass at the end that was never really poking out much in the original mix but is there now. Everything that is here was [originally] intended to be present.” 
Letter to Hermione (2019 Mix)
“I just wanted to make it a bit more floaty, a bit more dreamy. It's a beautiful, beautiful song. She [Bowie’s former girlfriend Hermione Farthingale] is very proud of that song. He was crushed when they split up. I've never seen him be so crushed, with any other split-up or any other woman. Hermione was a big thing in his life. She actually helped him a lot, to have a little more self-esteem. And she was a good cheerleader for him.” 
Cygnet Committee (2019 Mix)
“This is almost 10 minutes long, and the other challenge [with remixing it] is, there aren't many instruments on it. It doesn't have brass or anything. It was an anthem of youth, of the time—about oppression and all kinds of obstacles, and not wanting to make the mistakes of your elders. Trying to build a better future. But it’s kind of a bleak message, put across in a bleak way. And he really cracked up at the end. If my memory serves me well, he burst into tears after he sang that whole ending.” 
Janine (2019 Mix)
“This was a lot of fun to play, both in the studio and to play live. And I don't actually know who Janine is. You always have somebody in mind when you write a song. [Bowie once suggested it was someone his friend George Underwood was seeing at the time]. Yeah, there was a girl, yeah. I can't remember her name. Janine? I don't think so!” 
An Occasional Dream (2019 Mix)
“This is so beautiful. It's the epitome of his folk rock. A gentle, gentle song with a nice pokey little rhythm section behind it. Tim Renwick and I played the recorders. The recorder makes an appearance on almost every David Bowie album I produced—so it was a beginning of a thing between us. It was an eight-track recording, and we used to bounce things together because we knew we were going to run out of tracks. Both his lead vocals are on the same track, so it was almost impossible to do anything about that. But I was able to make a distinction between the two voices. I couldn't alter that track very much, but I made it sound pokier and more immediate.” 
Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud (2019 Mix)
“We only got one take, but we had the blessing of a three-hour rehearsal. David was the rhythm section. He sat right in the middle of the orchestra, with his 12-string, keeping the time. There's a little bleed of his 12-string, even though we had baffles around him to keep the sound out. He was shaking like a leaf at the beginning of the session. By the time the three hours was up, he was very calm about it, and it was a great take. I think Nigel Reeve of EMI told me David said this was his favourite song on the album. I can see why—it’s a masterful performance from him. I don't play piano, so I was writing all [the orchestra’s] parts, from my classical guitar—five sleepless days, just writing. The main thing to do was to get David's vocal in a better place. Get a nicer reverb on his voice. And get a little more depth out of the orchestra.” 
Conversation Piece (2019 Mix)
“This was really hard to leave off [the original vinyl]. That was a tragedy. We had three very long tracks—‘Cygnet Committee’ ate up the space of three songs—and on vinyl, you only had 20 minutes before you hit the out groove. If you went over the 20-minute mark, you would get one dB lower, for every minute over. This is a very, very sad song. Only years later, I realised that the person in the song who tells the story jumped off a bridge and drowned. That made me make a more sad mix. I was in a space like, ‘This has got to come off with a lot of gravity in the mix,’ even though it's kind of bouncy. There’s a way of mixing a bouncy song a little sadder. Not make it so bright. It’s one of my favourite, favourite songs. I loved playing it live.” 
God Knows I'm Good (2019 Mix)
“I made it sound a little more roomier. Like it’s in a bright large room, and with David's voice being intimate, but the guitars sound really crisp. Keith Christmas was the other lead guitarist. He played great, so he's featured more on this. It's one of my favourite tracks. The story [about an elderly woman caught shoplifting] is so sad. Oh my god. That's a real weeper, for me. It must have just touched a nerve with him, to even write it in the first place. He must have actually witnessed that.” 
Memory of a Free Festival (2019 Mix)
“We did this on the same day as ‘Cygnet Committee’. The bass player was playing for so long, and so hard, his bridge kind of collapsed and almost every note was clicking and buzzing. So that was a job, to get that to sound decent on the remix. David's intro is still as beautiful as ever, with just him on the harmonium. He's underrated as a harmonium player. It's a live recording and he didn't make one mistake. When we did the backing vocals, I invited Marc Bolan to sing the ‘sun machine’ part. He's in there somewhere. You can hear him if you listen closely…I mean, really closely. We had everyone we knew, all our gang from the Three Tuns [pub] in Beckenham. Girlfriends, boyfriends, friends of friends, maybe 40 people in the studio. A few months later, we did it all over again when we did the single version. I really liked the single version a lot better—because by then, I knew what I was doing.”

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2000s, Album, UMC (Universal Music Catalogue)

Additional Context: Rating score: 9. Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

Tony Visconti always listens to Space Oddity, the first album he produced for David Bowie, with trepidation. “I hear things,” he tells Apple Music. “Things that if I could’ve done them better, I would have done them better. The music is great, but the mixing was really bad. I was a novice—a decent musician, but not very good at running production.” That’s why remixing the album for its 50th anniversary was something of a catharsis. He sweated over the process in his New York studio, where a framed drawing of Bowie hangs over the spot where rock’s great chameleon would sit while the pair worked on his final albums, The Next Day and Blackstar. “I have this second chance to do something right about that album, and I’m terrified that I might do something wrong,” Visconti says. “So, during the mixes, I turned to that space quite a bit and I said, ‘Well, what do you think, David?’ Not that he answered me, but I just feel like he’s never really left us.” The duo’s bond was strong enough that Visconti can feel confident Bowie would approve of the job he’s done here. He’s excavated what he calls “hidden treasures”—notes, sounds, vocals—that had been buried in the original mix, and created a brighter, bolder Space Oddity. Here, he guides us through it, track by track. 
Space Oddity (2019 Mix)
“[In 1969] I couldn't see the wood for the trees. We had just had all these orbits around the Earth, something that was in the news every day. All I saw was David cashing in on that. I called it a cheap shot. Right to his face. We were brutally honest with each other. That's what made us good friends. The job that Gus Dudgeon [the engineer who stepped in to produce the track] did was fantastic. I tried to bow out after that. I said to David, ‘I suppose you’re going to stay with Gus.’ And he said, ‘No, I've got that out of the way. Now I can make the album that I want to make.’ I think I’ve made it sparkle and explode a bit more. I think the mix actually makes your body move. Like, you don't realise that the drummer and the bass player were really grooving—the kick drum was always buried in the original mix.” 
Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed (2019 Mix)
“[David] was in a good space when he wrote this. He wasn't afraid to be politically incorrect. And he would really go for the jugular. [On 1967’s David Bowie], he wanted to be in show business. He was thinking about himself at 40 or 50 years old—king of the musical theatre. He told me that. I asked him, in recent years, ‘What would you have done if you weren't a rock star?’ He goes, ‘Oh, I’d do music hall. I'd be writing musicals.’ But on this album, he was speaking for his generation. He was 22 years old, and he was feeling it like the rest of us were feeling it. This was the first song we recorded for the album and it was quite messy, really loosey-goosey playing. I don't mind that, but it made the original mix harder to do because the levels were jumping and there are a few blatant errors. So I tightened up the arrangement and was able to control the dynamics a bit more. There's some brass at the end that was never really poking out much in the original mix but is there now. Everything that is here was [originally] intended to be present.” 
Letter to Hermione (2019 Mix)
“I just wanted to make it a bit more floaty, a bit more dreamy. It's a beautiful, beautiful song. She [Bowie’s former girlfriend Hermione Farthingale] is very proud of that song. He was crushed when they split up. I've never seen him be so crushed, with any other split-up or any other woman. Hermione was a big thing in his life. She actually helped him a lot, to have a little more self-esteem. And she was a good cheerleader for him.” 
Cygnet Committee (2019 Mix)
“This is almost 10 minutes long, and the other challenge [with remixing it] is, there aren't many instruments on it. It doesn't have brass or anything. It was an anthem of youth, of the time—about oppression and all kinds of obstacles, and not wanting to make the mistakes of your elders. Trying to build a better future. But it’s kind of a bleak message, put across in a bleak way. And he really cracked up at the end. If my memory serves me well, he burst into tears after he sang that whole ending.” 
Janine (2019 Mix)
“This was a lot of fun to play, both in the studio and to play live. And I don't actually know who Janine is. You always have somebody in mind when you write a song. [Bowie once suggested it was someone his friend George Underwood was seeing at the time]. Yeah, there was a girl, yeah. I can't remember her name. Janine? I don't think so!” 
An Occasional Dream (2019 Mix)
“This is so beautiful. It's the epitome of his folk rock. A gentle, gentle song with a nice pokey little rhythm section behind it. Tim Renwick and I played the recorders. The recorder makes an appearance on almost every David Bowie album I produced—so it was a beginning of a thing between us. It was an eight-track recording, and we used to bounce things together because we knew we were going to run out of tracks. Both his lead vocals are on the same track, so it was almost impossible to do anything about that. But I was able to make a distinction between the two voices. I couldn't alter that track very much, but I made it sound pokier and more immediate.” 
Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud (2019 Mix)
“We only got one take, but we had the blessing of a three-hour rehearsal. David was the rhythm section. He sat right in the middle of the orchestra, with his 12-string, keeping the time. There's a little bleed of his 12-string, even though we had baffles around him to keep the sound out. He was shaking like a leaf at the beginning of the session. By the time the three hours was up, he was very calm about it, and it was a great take. I think Nigel Reeve of EMI told me David said this was his favourite song on the album. I can see why—it’s a masterful performance from him. I don't play piano, so I was writing all [the orchestra’s] parts, from my classical guitar—five sleepless days, just writing. The main thing to do was to get David's vocal in a better place. Get a nicer reverb on his voice. And get a little more depth out of the orchestra.” 
Conversation Piece (2019 Mix)
“This was really hard to leave off [the original vinyl]. That was a tragedy. We had three very long tracks—‘Cygnet Committee’ ate up the space of three songs—and on vinyl, you only had 20 minutes before you hit the out groove. If you went over the 20-minute mark, you would get one dB lower, for every minute over. This is a very, very sad song. Only years later, I realised that the person in the song who tells the story jumped off a bridge and drowned. That made me make a more sad mix. I was in a space like, ‘This has got to come off with a lot of gravity in the mix,’ even though it's kind of bouncy. There’s a way of mixing a bouncy song a little sadder. Not make it so bright. It’s one of my favourite, favourite songs. I loved playing it live.” 
God Knows I'm Good (2019 Mix)
“I made it sound a little more roomier. Like it’s in a bright large room, and with David's voice being intimate, but the guitars sound really crisp. Keith Christmas was the other lead guitarist. He played great, so he's featured more on this. It's one of my favourite tracks. The story [about an elderly woman caught shoplifting] is so sad. Oh my god. That's a real weeper, for me. It must have just touched a nerve with him, to even write it in the first place. He must have actually witnessed that.” 
Memory of a Free Festival (2019 Mix)
“We did this on the same day as ‘Cygnet Committee’. The bass player was playing for so long, and so hard, his bridge kind of collapsed and almost every note was clicking and buzzing. So that was a job, to get that to sound decent on the remix. David's intro is still as beautiful as ever, with just him on the harmonium. He's underrated as a harmonium player. It's a live recording and he didn't make one mistake. When we did the backing vocals, I invited Marc Bolan to sing the ‘sun machine’ part. He's in there somewhere. You can hear him if you listen closely…I mean, really closely. We had everyone we knew, all our gang from the Three Tuns [pub] in Beckenham. Girlfriends, boyfriends, friends of friends, maybe 40 people in the studio. A few months later, we did it all over again when we did the single version. I really liked the single version a lot better—because by then, I knew what I was doing.”

Album: ★ by David Bowie (2015)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Rhino
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2010s, Album, Rhino

Additional Context: Based on 3 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: Cracked Actor (Live Los Angeles '74) by David Bowie (2017)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Passionate, 2010s, Live, RCA


Album: A New Career in a New Town (1977 - 1982) by David Bowie (2017)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Passionate, 2010s, Compilation, Parlophone UK


Album: Divine Symmetry (An Alternative Journey Through Hunky Dory) by David Bowie (2022)
Genre: Rock | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: RCA
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Passionate, 2020s, Compilation, RCA


Album: Serious Moonlight by David Bowie (1983)
Genre: Rock | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Passionate, 1980s, Live, RCA


Album: Fashions by David Bowie (1982)
Record Label: RCA
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: 1980s, Compilation, RCA


Album: Nothing has changed. by David Bowie (2014)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: Parlophone
Format: Compilation

Description: Nothing Has Changed is the first David Bowie compilation to bridge “Changes”, “Ziggy Stardust” and other forever-potent glam anthems of his early years to his most current recordings. He pushed the parameters of pop music with the postmodern sonics of “Sound and Vision” and the dubbed-out funk of “Let’s Dance”, but the secret treasure is tucked at the end. The writhing jazz rhythms and wounded crooning of 2014’s “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” show that he never stopped searching for new inventions.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Passionate, 2010s, Compilation, Parlophone

Additional Context: Rating score: 8. Based on 1 votes

Nothing Has Changed is the first David Bowie compilation to bridge “Changes”, “Ziggy Stardust” and other forever-potent glam anthems of his early years to his most current recordings. He pushed the parameters of pop music with the postmodern sonics of “Sound and Vision” and the dubbed-out funk of “Let’s Dance”, but the secret treasure is tucked at the end. The writhing jazz rhythms and wounded crooning of 2014’s “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” show that he never stopped searching for new inventions.

Album: Five Years 1969–1973 by David Bowie (2015)
Genre: Rock | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: Parlophone
Format: Compilation

Description: This expansive overview focuses on David Bowie's fertile breakthrough, kicking off with his haunting 1969 hit "Space Oddity" and including every studio album up to 1973's Pin Ups, his affectionate Swinging London homage. Tracks from the storming Live Santa Monica '72 also showcase Bowie’s onstage reputation, as he balances rollicking workouts like the scuzzy “Hang on to Yourself” with poignant breathers like “Andy Warhol”, a moving acoustic guitar-led tribute from one pop icon to another.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Passionate, 2010s, Compilation, Parlophone

This expansive overview focuses on David Bowie's fertile breakthrough, kicking off with his haunting 1969 hit "Space Oddity" and including every studio album up to 1973's Pin Ups, his affectionate Swinging London homage. Tracks from the storming Live Santa Monica '72 also showcase Bowie’s onstage reputation, as he balances rollicking workouts like the scuzzy “Hang on to Yourself” with poignant breathers like “Andy Warhol”, a moving acoustic guitar-led tribute from one pop icon to another.

Album: Legacy by David Bowie (2016)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: RCA
Format: Compilation

Description: Bowie Legacy is a greatest hits album by British musician David Bowie, released on 11 November 2016 through Sony Music Entertainment in the U. S. and Warner Music Group in the UK and several territories.

The album's contents are mostly identical to the two-disc edition of Bowie's previous greatest hits album Nothing Has Changed (2014), with a few differences between both releases. "Love Is Lost" and "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)", which were present on Nothing Has Changed, are replaced by three new selections: "Lazarus" and "I Can't Give Everything Away", both from Bowie's final studio album Blackstar (2016), and the radio edit of the Heathen song "Slow Burn" (which also appears on the three-disc version of Nothing Has Changed). Additionally, a previously-unreleased mix of "Life on Mars?" is present instead of the original version from Hunky Dory (1971), and was released as a single and a special music video to promote the compilation.

Artist Background: David Robert Jones (8 January 1947, Brixton, London, England - 10 January 2016, New York, USA), better known by his stage name David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, regarded by critics and musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music. During his lifetime, his ... Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Passionate, 2010s, Compilation, RCA


Bowie Legacy is a greatest hits album by British musician David Bowie, released on 11 November 2016 through Sony Music Entertainment in the U. S. and Warner Music Group in the UK and several territories.

The album's contents are mostly identical to the two-disc edition of Bowie's previous greatest hits album Nothing Has Changed (2014), with a few differences between both releases. "Love Is Lost" and "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)", which were present on Nothing Has Changed, are replaced by three new selections: "Lazarus" and "I Can't Give Everything Away", both from Bowie's final studio album Blackstar (2016), and the radio edit of the Heathen song "Slow Burn" (which also appears on the three-disc version of Nothing Has Changed). Additionally, a previously-unreleased mix of "Life on Mars?" is present instead of the original version from Hunky Dory (1971), and was released as a single and a special music video to promote the compilation.

Album: The Best of David Bowie 1974/1979 by David Bowie (1998)
Genre: pop rock
Record Label: EMI
Format: CD

Artist Background: Artist from GB, known for alternative rock, art pop, art rock, classic rock, glam rock

Musical Influences: David Bowie & The Buzz, Dave Rodgers, Adrian Belew, Dennis Davis

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: pop rock, 1990s, CD, EMI


Album: I Can’t Give Everything Away by David Bowie (2016)
Genre: electro
Record Label: RCA
Format: CD-R

Artist Background: David Robert Jones (8 January 1947, Brixton, London, England - 10 January 2016, New York, USA), better known by his stage name David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, regarded by critics and musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music. During his lifetime, his ... Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: electro, 2010s, CD-R, RCA


Album: Black Tie White Noise by David Bowie (1993)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Album, Parlophone UK

Additional Context: Rating score: 6. Based on 1 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: “˜hours“¦' by David Bowie (1999)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 7. Based on 1 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: Stage by David Bowie (1978)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Live, RCA


Album: Reality by David Bowie (2003)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Rhino
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2000s, Album, Rhino

Additional Context: Rating score: 8. Based on 4 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: Station to Station by David Bowie (1976)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Description: When David Bowie released Station to Station in 1976, he hit a new commercial pinnacle: It would soon become his second album in a row to reach the Top 10 on both sides of the pond. But from a mental-health standpoint, Bowie was at an all-time low. Upon moving to LA in 1975 to film his starring role in Nicolas Roeg’s art-house classic, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie’s recreational cocaine use had developed into a full-blown snowstorm, plunging him into an all-consuming paranoia that manifested itself in a notoriously extreme diet of red peppers and milk, dramatic weight loss and an obsession with the occult. Given his precarious condition at the time, Bowie infamously claimed that he had no recollection of making Station to Station. But in reality, he savvily turned his diminished physical and psychological state into a new persona: The Thin White Duke. Pale, skeletal, yet still untouchably stylish, Bowie reinvented himself as the ghost of a pop star.

Though Station to Station carries over the soul and funk influences of the preceding Young Americans, this is an album possessed by a more haunted and sinister energy. Its staggering 10-minute title track is the equivalent of opening a door and being greeted by a 100-foot-high brick wall, as an ominous swell of electronics gives way to an anvil-pounding beat that—while not quite heavy metal—is still crushing enough to have inspired a Melvins cover version many years later. But partway through, the song suddenly transforms from doomy dirge to rapturous disco, effectively encapsulating Station to Station’s uncanny balance of drug-addled delusion and futurist epiphany. Station to Station may have been born in a cloud of LA excess, but Bowie’s ear was already keying into the avant-rock experimentation flourishing in Germany. And if he wasn’t yet fully incorporating the electronic aesthetic of bands like Kraftwerk and Harmonia, their machine-like precision informed the funky-yet-frosty allure of songs like “Golden Years” and “Stay”.

Perhaps the most fascinating attribute of Station to Station is the way it makes organic instrumentation sound unearthly—“TVC15” foregrounds the playful piano-runs of the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan and Bowie’s own free-ranging sax-work, yet the song’s steely rhythmic pulse, cryptic communiques and robotic chorus incantations sound like they’re beaming in from another planet. But even the album’s two side-closing ballads—the elegant “Word on a Wing” and a dramatic reading of the Nina Simone signature “Wild Is the Wind”—convey the same message as the album’s more outre excursions: Bowie was rapidly losing interest in traditional rock music and rock culture in general, and in order to escape its temptations and trappings, he needed to make records that would position him firmly outside that world. “The European canon is here!” he announced on Station to Station’s title track. His next move was to book himself a transatlantic flight back to the Old World and fulfill that promise.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Based on 4 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

Album: Welcome to the Blackout (live London '78) by David Bowie (2018)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Passionate, 2010s, Live, RCA


Album: Hunky Dory by David Bowie (1971)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Album

Description: 1971’s Hunky Dory isn’t just David Bowie’s first great album, it’s the seed of everything he did after. “Life on Mars?”: There’s a song about chasing the unknown. “Oh! You Pretty Things”: A song about how the future’s already here. “Changes”: A manifesto for a career defined by them. Or how about the way he pours it on like an old-fashioned showman one minute (“Quicksand”) and turns a cold, modern shoulder the next (“Queen Bitch”). 
At a time when popular music was dominated by the earthy confessionalism of singer-songwriters, his embrace of persona was a radical gesture: Not only was his identity flexible, it was disposable—a costume that, as in the kabuki traditions he’d become fascinated by a few years earlier, could be put on or taken off depending on how you felt that day. And out of the gesture comes a philosophy: Just because you’re a boy doesn’t mean you can’t sometimes feel—or even dress—like a girl. And just because you’re human doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes feel weird living on Earth. Art, by extension, isn’t a place to find your identity, but to detach from it, a place where people can discover their selves by escaping them. Years before conversations about queerness and gender fluidity got anywhere near the mainstream, he presented the argument that we’re never just one thing, and that the things we are don’t always mean what people think they do. 
“Don’t believe in yourself, don’t deceive with belief,” he sings on “Quicksand”. It’s a scary proposition, and one that he’d spend most of his career facing up to: Let yourself peel away in the wind, and prepare for what comes next.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, Parlophone UK

Additional Context: Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

1971’s Hunky Dory isn’t just David Bowie’s first great album, it’s the seed of everything he did after. “Life on Mars?”: There’s a song about chasing the unknown. “Oh! You Pretty Things”: A song about how the future’s already here. “Changes”: A manifesto for a career defined by them. Or how about the way he pours it on like an old-fashioned showman one minute (“Quicksand”) and turns a cold, modern shoulder the next (“Queen Bitch”). 
At a time when popular music was dominated by the earthy confessionalism of singer-songwriters, his embrace of persona was a radical gesture: Not only was his identity flexible, it was disposable—a costume that, as in the kabuki traditions he’d become fascinated by a few years earlier, could be put on or taken off depending on how you felt that day. And out of the gesture comes a philosophy: Just because you’re a boy doesn’t mean you can’t sometimes feel—or even dress—like a girl. And just because you’re human doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes feel weird living on Earth. Art, by extension, isn’t a place to find your identity, but to detach from it, a place where people can discover their selves by escaping them. Years before conversations about queerness and gender fluidity got anywhere near the mainstream, he presented the argument that we’re never just one thing, and that the things we are don’t always mean what people think they do. 
“Don’t believe in yourself, don’t deceive with belief,” he sings on “Quicksand”. It’s a scary proposition, and one that he’d spend most of his career facing up to: Let yourself peel away in the wind, and prepare for what comes next.

Album: David Bowie by David Bowie (1967)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Universal Records
Format: Album

Description: The hippie folk-rock sound of David Bowie's second album (like his 1967 debut, it was just called David Bowie on its original UK release) may come as a surprise at first. But underneath the pealing 12-string acoustic guitars and often lavish arrangements, the title track's chilling alienation and the doomy epic "Cygnet Committee" forecast Bowie's sometimes apocalyptic '70s lyrics. Elsewhere, the touching breakup ballad "Letter to Hermione" and the dreamily communal "Memory of a Free Festival" showcase a gentler side.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1960s, Album, Universal Records

Additional Context: Rating score: 6. Based on 1 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

The hippie folk-rock sound of David Bowie's second album (like his 1967 debut, it was just called David Bowie on its original UK release) may come as a surprise at first. But underneath the pealing 12-string acoustic guitars and often lavish arrangements, the title track's chilling alienation and the doomy epic "Cygnet Committee" forecast Bowie's sometimes apocalyptic '70s lyrics. Elsewhere, the touching breakup ballad "Letter to Hermione" and the dreamily communal "Memory of a Free Festival" showcase a gentler side.

Album: Scary Monsters“¦ and Super Creeps by David Bowie (1980)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1980s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 9. Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: Toy by David Bowie (2022)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2020s, Album, Parlophone

Additional Context: Rating score: 7. Based on 1 votes


Album: Heathen by David Bowie (2002)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Rhino
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2000s, Album, Rhino

Additional Context: Based on 5 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: London Boy by David Bowie (1995)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: Decca Music Group Ltd.
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Passionate, 1990s, Compilation, Decca Music Group Ltd.


Album: VH1 Storytellers by David Bowie (2000)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Interscope
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2000s, Live, Interscope


Album: Lodger by David Bowie (1979)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Description: Released in 1979, the third and final chapter of David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy has always felt like the outlier of the three. For one, Lodger was actually recorded in Switzerland and New York, and—in contrast to the dichotomous pop/ambient structures of the preceding Low and “Heroes”—the album marks a full-fledged return to focused, guitar-driven songcraft. But Lodger earns its place in the trilogy not only because it employs much of the same supporting cast, including chief collaborator Brian Eno, but because it’s ultimately a by-product of the same feverishly experimental streak that coloured the previous instalments. It’s just that, instead of trying to push himself outside of the rock lexicon, Bowie reformulates it from within, by turning his words, melodies and chord progressions inside-out while still working inside the confines of a three-minute pop song. Back on Ziggy Stardust, Bowie assumed the look of a space alien; Lodger sounds like it was actually made by one.

Lodger is ultimately distinguished by its loose, playful spirit, which was largely inspired by the vague yet suggestive directions solicited from Eno’s famous Oblique Strategies playing-card set. (The results included, but were not limited to: swapping instrumental roles, writing new songs over old ones being played backwards on tape, and building different tunes out of the same chord patterns played at different speeds.) Where Low and “Heroes” reflected the tension and trauma of post-war Europe, here Bowie takes a more carefree globe-trotting approach. Lodger finds him smashing Middle Eastern folk music into reggae rhythms (“Yassassin”), pairing jungle-rumbling rhythms with absurdist proto-rap vignettes (“African Night Flight”) and reimagining the cool krautrock pulse of Neu! as the soundtrack to swashbuckling, seafaring adventure (“Red Sails”). And while “Heroes” guitar hero Robert Fripp isn’t around this time, Bowie finds a worthy replacement in Frank Zappa associate Adrian Belew, who adds funhouse-mirrored frequencies to the avant-soul stomper “Repetition”, while long-time foil Carlos Alomar brings a furiously funky edge to the manic, sidewinding groove of “Look Back in Anger”.

But if Lodger sees Bowie taking up residency on his own planet, at a considerable aesthetic distance from the punk and New Wave pretty things he spawned, it also sees him engaging with the pop world in suitably sardonic fashion. At a time when rockers like The Rolling Stones were angling to get in on the disco gold rush, Bowie was making dance music about dance culture: “D.J.” sees him stepping into the platform shoes of a nightclub record selector buckling under the pressure to be a crowd-pleasing human jukebox, atop a tough funk strut that’s nonetheless tailor-made for getting down on the floor. And with “Boys Keep Swinging”, he takes the macho-man cosplay of the Village People and—thanks to the song’s coy lyrics and drag-themed video—makes the homoeroticism even more overt, to the point where a skittish RCA Records refused to release it as a single in America. In the wake of his fantastic voyage through the 1970s, Lodger finds Bowie far away from the glam-rock boogie he pioneered at the dawn of the decade, and yet still very much in the same place, relishing his role as rock’s foremost provocateur.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 8. Based on 1 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

Released in 1979, the third and final chapter of David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy has always felt like the outlier of the three. For one, Lodger was actually recorded in Switzerland and New York, and—in contrast to the dichotomous pop/ambient structures of the preceding Low and “Heroes”—the album marks a full-fledged return to focused, guitar-driven songcraft. But Lodger earns its place in the trilogy not only because it employs much of the same supporting cast, including chief collaborator Brian Eno, but because it’s ultimately a by-product of the same feverishly experimental streak that coloured the previous instalments. It’s just that, instead of trying to push himself outside of the rock lexicon, Bowie reformulates it from within, by turning his words, melodies and chord progressions inside-out while still working inside the confines of a three-minute pop song. Back on Ziggy Stardust, Bowie assumed the look of a space alien; Lodger sounds like it was actually made by one.

Lodger is ultimately distinguished by its loose, playful spirit, which was largely inspired by the vague yet suggestive directions solicited from Eno’s famous Oblique Strategies playing-card set. (The results included, but were not limited to: swapping instrumental roles, writing new songs over old ones being played backwards on tape, and building different tunes out of the same chord patterns played at different speeds.) Where Low and “Heroes” reflected the tension and trauma of post-war Europe, here Bowie takes a more carefree globe-trotting approach. Lodger finds him smashing Middle Eastern folk music into reggae rhythms (“Yassassin”), pairing jungle-rumbling rhythms with absurdist proto-rap vignettes (“African Night Flight”) and reimagining the cool krautrock pulse of Neu! as the soundtrack to swashbuckling, seafaring adventure (“Red Sails”). And while “Heroes” guitar hero Robert Fripp isn’t around this time, Bowie finds a worthy replacement in Frank Zappa associate Adrian Belew, who adds funhouse-mirrored frequencies to the avant-soul stomper “Repetition”, while long-time foil Carlos Alomar brings a furiously funky edge to the manic, sidewinding groove of “Look Back in Anger”.

But if Lodger sees Bowie taking up residency on his own planet, at a considerable aesthetic distance from the punk and New Wave pretty things he spawned, it also sees him engaging with the pop world in suitably sardonic fashion. At a time when rockers like The Rolling Stones were angling to get in on the disco gold rush, Bowie was making dance music about dance culture: “D.J.” sees him stepping into the platform shoes of a nightclub record selector buckling under the pressure to be a crowd-pleasing human jukebox, atop a tough funk strut that’s nonetheless tailor-made for getting down on the floor. And with “Boys Keep Swinging”, he takes the macho-man cosplay of the Village People and—thanks to the song’s coy lyrics and drag-themed video—makes the homoeroticism even more overt, to the point where a skittish RCA Records refused to release it as a single in America. In the wake of his fantastic voyage through the 1970s, Lodger finds Bowie far away from the glam-rock boogie he pioneered at the dawn of the decade, and yet still very much in the same place, relishing his role as rock’s foremost provocateur.

Album: “Heroes” by David Bowie (1977)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 8. Based on 1 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: Bowie at the Beeb: The Best of the BBC Radio Sessions 68–72 by David Bowie (2000)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2000s, Live, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 2. Based on 1 votes


Album: 1.Outside: The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper Cycle by David Bowie (1995)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: The Next Day by David Bowie (2013)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Rhino
Format: Album

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2010s, Album, Rhino

Additional Context: Based on 6 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Album: David Live by David Bowie (1974)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Live, Parlophone UK


Album: Glass Spider by David Bowie (2002)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2000s, Live, RCA


Album: A Reality Tour by David Bowie (2010)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: Epic
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 2010s, Live, Epic


Album: Pin Ups by David Bowie (1973)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Description: “My brother’s back at home with his Beatles and his Stones/We never got it off on that revolution stuff/What a drag,” David Bowie wrote on “All the Young Dudes”, the 1972 glam anthem he gifted to his friends Mott the Hoople. It’s a lyric that cracked open a generation-gap fault line, one that separated the rock establishment figures who’d soundtracked the 1960s from the freaks who stood at the vanguard of a new musical uprising in the 1970s. Of course, the irony was that, even as Bowie was shaping rock’s future, he was always paying his respects to the past. He’d revamped The Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together” on 1973’s Aladdin Sane and covered The Beatles’ “Across the Universe” on 1975’s Young Americans. But it was the 1973 all-covers collection PinUps that solidified a crucial aspect of the Bowie mythos: Beyond his trailblazing sense of fashion and gender fluidity, he was also rock’s foremost curator and taste-maker, the sort of artist who could redefine the canon according to his own esoteric sensibilities.

On PinUps, Bowie builds a bridge from 1970s glam-rock to the British Invasion of the preceding decade, spotlighting the raucous rave-ups that taught this queen how to kick like a mule. But while the tracklist features familiar favourites from The Who, The Kinks and The Yardbirds, Bowie devotes just as much space to the unsung heroes of the 1960s garage boom. If glam was proto-punk, then Bowie’s renditions of the Pretty Things’ “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “Rosalyn” qualify as proto-glam (you can draw a direct line from the latter to the Ziggy Stardust romp “Hang on to Yourself”). And when you hear Bowie throw himself into the fevered, accelerating chorus of the Easybeats’ “Friday on My Mind”, you’ll understand how he developed the breathless singing style he brought to his own hot-wired rockers like “Suffragette City”. But Bowie also nods to his contemporaries on PinUps—even if he does go deep into their catalogue: At a time when mainstream audiences were tuning in en masse to the cosmic frequencies of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Bowie pledged fealty to the group’s original Syd Barrett-led iteration, updating the psych-pop touchstone “See Emily Play” into a piece of glitter-rock theatre.

Though Bowie is largely faithful to his source material, PinUps is ultimately an act of sly subversion, a transfusion of hormonal, alpha-male 1960s-rock energy with glam’s coy flamboyance. However, the album’s most enduring entry is its most atypical: Bowie delivers The Merseys’ soulful serenade “Sorrow” with a melodramatic gusto that liberates it from the 1960s golden-oldie songbook—and elevates it into an eternal Bowie standard.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 8. Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace

“My brother’s back at home with his Beatles and his Stones/We never got it off on that revolution stuff/What a drag,” David Bowie wrote on “All the Young Dudes”, the 1972 glam anthem he gifted to his friends Mott the Hoople. It’s a lyric that cracked open a generation-gap fault line, one that separated the rock establishment figures who’d soundtracked the 1960s from the freaks who stood at the vanguard of a new musical uprising in the 1970s. Of course, the irony was that, even as Bowie was shaping rock’s future, he was always paying his respects to the past. He’d revamped The Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together” on 1973’s Aladdin Sane and covered The Beatles’ “Across the Universe” on 1975’s Young Americans. But it was the 1973 all-covers collection PinUps that solidified a crucial aspect of the Bowie mythos: Beyond his trailblazing sense of fashion and gender fluidity, he was also rock’s foremost curator and taste-maker, the sort of artist who could redefine the canon according to his own esoteric sensibilities.

On PinUps, Bowie builds a bridge from 1970s glam-rock to the British Invasion of the preceding decade, spotlighting the raucous rave-ups that taught this queen how to kick like a mule. But while the tracklist features familiar favourites from The Who, The Kinks and The Yardbirds, Bowie devotes just as much space to the unsung heroes of the 1960s garage boom. If glam was proto-punk, then Bowie’s renditions of the Pretty Things’ “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “Rosalyn” qualify as proto-glam (you can draw a direct line from the latter to the Ziggy Stardust romp “Hang on to Yourself”). And when you hear Bowie throw himself into the fevered, accelerating chorus of the Easybeats’ “Friday on My Mind”, you’ll understand how he developed the breathless singing style he brought to his own hot-wired rockers like “Suffragette City”. But Bowie also nods to his contemporaries on PinUps—even if he does go deep into their catalogue: At a time when mainstream audiences were tuning in en masse to the cosmic frequencies of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Bowie pledged fealty to the group’s original Syd Barrett-led iteration, updating the psych-pop touchstone “See Emily Play” into a piece of glitter-rock theatre.

Though Bowie is largely faithful to his source material, PinUps is ultimately an act of sly subversion, a transfusion of hormonal, alpha-male 1960s-rock energy with glam’s coy flamboyance. However, the album’s most enduring entry is its most atypical: Bowie delivers The Merseys’ soulful serenade “Sorrow” with a melodramatic gusto that liberates it from the 1960s golden-oldie songbook—and elevates it into an eternal Bowie standard.

Album: Glastonbury 2000 by David Bowie (2000)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Passionate, 2000s, Live, RCA


Album: Loving The Alien 1983-1988 by David Bowie (2018)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: Parlophone
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Passionate, 2010s, Compilation, Parlophone


Album: Conversation Piece by David Bowie (2019)
Genre: Rock | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: Parlophone UK
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Passionate, 2010s, Compilation, Parlophone UK


Album: Who Can I Be Now? 1974–1976 by David Bowie (2016)
Genre: Rock | Mood: Passionate
Record Label: Parlophone
Format: Compilation

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Passionate, 2010s, Compilation, Parlophone

Additional Context: Rating score: 9. Based on 1 votes


Album: Live Santa Monica '72 by David Bowie (1994)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Live

Description: The glammy, gender-bending wit of Ziggy Stardust raised David Bowie's American profile, but the swaggering hard rock intensity of his 1972 U.S. tour made him a superstar. Bowie and his Spiders from Mars—freshly expanded with new keyboardist Mike Garson—are scary-tight: the opening "Hang on to Yourself" has the manic energy of punk four years before the Ramones. Earlier, more reflective material like the haunting "Life on Mars" and a dramatic take on Jacques Brel's "My Death" is just as direct and powerful.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1990s, Live, RCA

The glammy, gender-bending wit of Ziggy Stardust raised David Bowie's American profile, but the swaggering hard rock intensity of his 1972 U.S. tour made him a superstar. Bowie and his Spiders from Mars—freshly expanded with new keyboardist Mike Garson—are scary-tight: the opening "Hang on to Yourself" has the manic energy of punk four years before the Ramones. Earlier, more reflective material like the haunting "Life on Mars" and a dramatic take on Jacques Brel's "My Death" is just as direct and powerful.

Album: Diamond Dogs by David Bowie (1974)
Genre: Rock | Style: Rock/Pop | Mood: Weird
Record Label: RCA
Format: Album

Description: Diamond Dogs is a concept album by David Bowie, originally released in 1974 on RCA Records, his eighth album. Thematically, it was a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie's own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Bowie had wanted to make a theatrical production of Orwell's book and began writing material after completing sessions for his 1973 album Pin Ups, but the late author’s estate denied the rights. The songs wound up on the second half of Diamond Dogs instead where, as the titles indicated, the Nineteen Eighty-Four theme was prominent.

Artist Background: David Robert Jones (8 January 1947, Brixton, London, England - 10 January 2016, New York, USA), better known by his stage name David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, regarded by critics and musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music. During his lifetime, his ... Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Related Artists: Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, T. Rex, Lou Reed

Music Scene: Part of the London, England music scene. Emerged in the 1960s era. Associated with Rock movement. Known for Rock/Pop style.

Tags: Rock, Rock/Pop, Weird, 1970s, Album, RCA

Additional Context: Rating score: 8. Based on 2 votes. Available on Discogs marketplace


Diamond Dogs is a concept album by David Bowie, originally released in 1974 on RCA Records, his eighth album. Thematically, it was a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie's own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Bowie had wanted to make a theatrical production of Orwell's book and began writing material after completing sessions for his 1973 album Pin Ups, but the late author’s estate denied the rights. The songs wound up on the second half of Diamond Dogs instead where, as the titles indicated, the Nineteen Eighty-Four theme was prominent.

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