David Bowie plotted his departure from this world. He designed his final album, Blackstar, as a farewell, and he left his estate with blueprints for a reissue series that began with the release of Five Years (1969-1973), a box that appeared mere months prior to his death in January 2016.
Moonage Daydream wasn’t part of Bowie’s posthumous plans. A film by Brett Morgen, the director of the exceptional Robert Evans 2012 documentary The Kid Stays In The Picture and 2015’s Cobain: Montage Of Heck , Moonage Daydream tells the Chameleon of Rock’s story through a kaleidoscopic mashup of sound and vision, all enhanced by rare footage from the official Bowie archives.
During his five-decade career, Bowie released 26 studio albums as well as seven official live albums plus a host of compilations. His discography has greatly increased in the years since his 2016 death, with archival live sets, box sets, and such scrapped albums as The Gouster and Toy seeing the light of day. It’s a lot to sort through and there are pitfalls: the sparkling swagger of “Blue Jean” continues to convince listeners there may be something else of worth on 1984's terrible Tonight. But here, just in time for the September 16 release of Moonage Daydream, The A.V. Club has selected 20 records that capture Bowie at his peak, whether he’s honing his craft, striving for a new sound, or mustering the full strength of his artistry.
Revitalized by the positive reception to Heathen, his overdue 2002 reunion with producer Tony Visconti, David Bowie decided to work once again with his old friend for its swift sequel, Reality. Bowie wanted to knock out an album designed to be taken on the road—songs that could weather a tour and stand up next to warhorses. Fittingly, Reality leans heavily on big beats and hooks, often sounding a bit like a hybrid between his post-Berlin new wave flirtations and his unheralded pre-fame ’60s pop. There are exceptions to the rule: a tender cover of George Harrison’s “Try Some, Buy Some,” the still life of “The Loneliest Guy” and the Latin-tinged epic “Bring Me The Disco King.” These three quieter highlights add some depth and dimension to an album that otherwise is a testament to Bowie’s craft as both a songwriter and record maker.
The Berlin trilogy and its Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) coda may be regarded as a creative peak for David Bowie but the number of American Top 40 hits they generated was a big zero. Frustrated with this commercial lull and his appetite whetted by the massive success of “Under Pressure,” his 1981 duet with Queen, David Bowie turned to Nile Rogers to help him streamline and polish his eccentricities for Let’s Dance, a self-styled blockbuster that fulfilled its own prophecies. There’s an efficiency to Let’s Dance—particularly its big hits “China Girl,” “Modern Love” and “Let’s Dance,” the latter being Bowie’s only single to top the US charts—that remains startling: he could craft modernist pop whenever he chose. Such calculation can mean that Let’s Dance is occasionally a little too tidy on its margins but Rogers’ production is vibrant and precise, letting a then-unknown Stevie Ray Vaughan occupy the empty spaces with guitar solos so exuberant and human they breathe life into what’s otherwise a cool, clean machine.
Other double-live relics of the 1970s were polished and tweaked so they presented an ideal portrait of the artist. Not David Live. It’s a photograph, a faded Polaroid of a very specific moment in time, namely the period when David Bowie was leaving Ziggy Stardust for the plastic soul of Young Americans. Apart from a cover of Eddie Floyd’s “Knock On Wood,” there are no overt soul moves on David Live yet it’s clear that Bowie has tired of his freeze-dried glam persona. Working with bandleader Michael Kamen, Bowie is pushing against the confines of glam, taking songs at slower tempos and adding suggestions of funk to such hard rockers as “Rebel Rebel” and “Diamond Dogs.” Sometimes, the new clothes are an ill fit, such as “Space Oddity” being revamped as a Vegas showstopper, but there’s value to hearing Bowie in the midst of his search for a new way of being. That uncertainty is why David Live is compelling: it’s a document of Bowie molting into another persona.
The second David Bowie album in a row to be titled David Bowie, this 1969 record is often seen as his “official” debut, as his previous swinging London pop—London as in the label and the city—is considered too frivolous and forgotten to function as ground zero. This album is where Bowie’s persona begins to come into view and not just because it’s anchored by “Space Oddity,” a 2001-inspired saga of a stranded astronaut that became his breakthrough hit in two separate territories in two separate years. The futurism of “Space Oddity” disguises how the rest of the record is firmly rooted in hippiedom, with Bowie strumming a 12-string guitar and singing spacey melodies. Despite his descent into the mystic, Bowie pushes at the boundaries of flower power, bringing pop panache to “Janine” and jumping into the unknown with “Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed,” a wild, winding epic that contains the seeds of glam rock.
Bowie drifted off course after finally scoring a genuine blockbuster with Let’s Dance, getting so far afield by the end of the 1980s he needed to submerge his ego within the confines of Tin Machine, an often admirable attempt to reckon with the noise explosion of American indie rock. Once that group imploded—it remains mired in contractual woes to this day—he was free to reconnect with his adventurous spirit on Black Tie White Noise, a record that simultaneously ushered in a stable middle age. The title alludes to this duality: the black tie is a nod to his marriage to Iman (the album indeed opens with a song called “The Wedding”), the white noise to the return of provocative art. While the balance between pop and art might be off, the album crackles with a sense of rediscovery, as if Bowie is finally on secure footing after years of tentatively moving forward in the darkness.
Pressured by his record label into delivering a new album in time for the Christmas season of 1973 and encouraged by his manager to withhold original material until his publishing deal was renegotiated, David Bowie solved his conundrum by bashing out a covers album. Easier said than done, though. Just prior to the sessions, Bowie wrapped the Ziggy Stardust tour with his infamous proclamation that “This is the last show we’ll ever do,” news that came as a surprise to his backing band the Spiders from Mars. Drummer Mick Woodmansey left in frustration, so the band on Pin Ups isn’t quite the Spiders but it is the last time guitarist Mick Ronson pops up on a Bowie record and the last LP to be produced by Ken Scott, so it serves as a bit of a fizzy epilogue to the classic era: Bowie is deliberately in second gear but still delivers some trashy thrills. Some of the fun derives from the song selection, assiduously focused on the stylish blues and arty pop of pre-psychedelic Britain yet careless enough to offer repeat after repeat: there are two songs each from the Who, the Yardbirds, and Pretty Things. This isn’t indifference as much as it is an obligation executed recklessly. There’s a real appeal to the sloppiness—it gives “Rosalyn” and “Where Have All The Good Times Gone” a gleeful edge—and when it lifts, as it does on “Sorrow” from the Merseys, the album can even seem gorgeous.
Thwarted in his attempt to mount a musical adaptation of 1984 by George Orwell’s widow and abandoned by his remaining Spiders and producer Ken Scott, David Bowie picked up the pieces on his own, cobbling together Diamond Dogs with the remnants of unfulfilled dreams. The resulting record is lean, heavy, and grimy, driven by Bowie’s overblown guitar and fueled by dystopian decadence, a hybrid crystalized on its hit single “Rebel Rebel.” The particulars of Bowie’s grand vision are fuzzy but evocative, suggesting a society revealing in its own collapse. Bowie’s smeary focus means that Diamond Dogs can verge on silliness but that’s also a key to its appeal: it’s lurid and lascivious, a record that seems more decadent due to its half-baked pretension.
Not a complete recounting of David Bowie’s BBC Sessions, this double-disc set nevertheless is the best way to appreciate his evolution from a fey wannabe pop star to an alien rock and roll force. The second disc chronicles the Spiders from Mars at something of a peak, delivering sinewy and sexy renditions of Ziggy Stardust material, but it’s the first disc that’s fascinating, as it traces his early years without the anchor of “Space Oddity.” Opening with the baroque rush of “In The Heat Of The Morning,” this winds through overheated pop and Jacques Brel tunes learned from Scott Walker, before delivering the menacing The Man Who Sold The World material with a startling light touch that dovetails neatly with such precious oddities as “Bombers” and “Kooks,” which are punctuated with reeling, rocking Chuck Berry covers. Bowie confidently pursuing detours here, often with more force than he did in the studio, which is why Bowie At The Beeb remains captivating listening.
David Bowie moved through a few phases prior to developing the glam alien Ziggy Stardust but Young Americans felt like the first major stylistic shift in his career, the moment when he abandoned everything to go in search of a new world. Here, he immersed himself in Philly Soul, creating music that’s more pastiche than synthesis yet that surface is appealing and underneath the smooth swing, there’s an undeniable reliance on R&B, a groove that would remain at the base of his music from this point forward. Much of the credit has to be placed on Carlos Alomar, a guitarist who began his long collaboration with Bowie here, sticking with the rocker through the artiest moments of his career by giving his abstract shapes a foundation in funk. Bowie would later learn how to disguise the funk that’s at the forefront here, so hot and infectious that James Brown himself ripped off the riff that propels “Fame.” The shift to soul also opened the door for Bowie to tentatively explore some vulnerability he studiously avoided before. Maybe Bowie can’t quite croon the smoother moments on Young Americans but the quiver in his voice on “Win” and “Can You Hear Me” is affecting all the same.
Call this The Alien Who Fell To Earth. Aladdin Sane brings Ziggy Stardust to terra firma, trading celestial fantasies for the pleasures of the flesh. It opens with “Watch That Man,” whose power chords feel like a fanfare. As the straights look to him for encouragement, he flirts with them by whispering about Che Guevara and offering candied doo wop memories of a “Drive-In Saturday,” a place where all the silver screen fantasies come true. Aladdin Sane exists within the confines of Hollywood dreams, a place where puns about Jean Genet sit alongside freeform piano runs by Mick Garson, the distance between the two bridged by overheated renditions of Rolling Stones oldies. Forget The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars: this is the sound of Bowie indulging in his rock stardom.
Reinvigorated by Black Tie White Noise and The Buddha Of Suburbia, a little-heard 1993 soundtrack that found him revisiting ambient ideas originally essayed on his Berlin Trilogy, David Bowie decided to reunite with his old colleague Brian Eno. Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks—Bowie appeared in its feature-length prequel Fire Walk With Me—Bowie crafted a small-town mystery that serves as a conduit to experimentation. 1. Outside is a creature of its time, filled with neo-industrial gloss and scattershot darkness that spills over the course of a CD. All the extra length allows Bowie to wind down paths he might’ve otherwise avoided—it’s the closest he came to a studio double album—and the indulgence means it’s a record that needs time to unpack. Once the odd structure and period gloss fade, 1. Outside emerges as one of Bowie’s richest records, a restless, layered ode to the joys of experimentation.
Structurally, “Heroes” is nearly identical to Low, divided into a side of art-rock and a side of instrumentals, yet the album feels markedly different: it’s majestic and outward in a way that Low wasn’t. Some of this is because it’s a deeper collaboration between David Bowie and Brian Eno, the latter receiving four co-writing credits here compared to just one on Low, but there’s also the presence of guitarist Robert Fripp, who gives the album striking, shocking sheets of noise that cascade into melody just as they threaten to curdle. All three musicians are at a peak on “Heroes,” a soaring romantic anthem that earns its deliverance through its texture and bones, yet the rest of the rockers have a confident, almost confrontational edge that’s immediately apparent once “Beauty And The Beast” comes tumbling out of the speakers. This muscular, manic energy is countered on the sweeter ambient tracks on the second side yet “Heroes” doesn’t end on a contemplative note: “The Secret Life Of Arabia” finds Bowie itching against his self-imposed confines, creating the bridge to the dense, brilliant Lodger.
The Man Who Sold The World comes into focus on a sustained note of feedback that gives way to a probing guitar riff—a heightened bit of melodrama that functions as an introduction to Mick Ronson, David Bowie’s lieutenant throughout the glam years. Sprawling and defiantly ugly, The Man Who Sold The World is too elliptical and heavy to be called glam—there’s no vivaciousness here—yet that unrepentant sludge is the key to the album’s appeal. It’s a plummet into the heart of darkness, anchored by such apocalyptic blues as “She Shook Me Cold” and crunching rockers as “Black Country Rock.” When the heavy fog lifts, as it does on its shimmering title track, The Man Who Sold The World still shudders with madness and mysticism spiked with a hint of malevolence.
The last installment of “The Berlin Trilogy” wasn’t recorded in the German city, which isn’t the only way Lodger differed from its companions. Lodger found David Bowie abandoning the twinned structure of Low and “Heroes” in favor of an enthusiastic embrace of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards—prompts that encouraged musicians to abandon the familiar for the foreign. Musicians swapped instruments and reversed chord changes, establishing an unsteady foundation upon which Bowie layered Mideastern music and skewed avant-rock supercharged by guitarist Adrian Belew, a King Crimson veteran who gave the music otherworldly textures while playing with the vitality of a live wire. Unlike its cousins, Lodger feels purposeful, even relentless, especially on the hard-charging second side which rushes through “DJ,” “Look Back In Anger” and “Boys Keep Swinging,” a triptych of confrontational art-funk where the grooves, hooks, and accents feel as they’re competing for attention.
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) finds David Bowie closing the door on the 1970s, the decade where he remained in a state of constant motion, trying on a career’s worth of new sounds and personas. Bowie takes a glance at the past here, revisiting his “Space Oddity” Major Tom with a jaundiced eye on “Ashes To Ashes,” a percolating piece of interstellar pop that can be used as a yardstick to gauge how far he traveled in a decade’s time. Gone are the folk and mysticism, traded for a camouflaged funk, anthemic art-song, and melodic avant-pop. It’s new wave as arena rock, a formula that seems plainly commercial on its face, yet its angles and gleam are too sharp, the production too dense, so it skews toward art, not pop—an equation that means it’s a record that can still surprise and thrill even after its contours are memorized.
Unbeknownst to all but his inner circle, David Bowie was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2014, which meant he wrote and recorded Blackstar harboring the knowledge it would likely be his last record. Indeed, he died two days after its release on January 8, 2016, a coincidence that left the album seeming like a premonition: it’s as if Bowie knew he’d leave this earth not long after delivering one last masterpiece. Blackstar indeed is a masterpiece, corralling themes and ideas central to Bowie’s body of work yet executed with startling freshness, as he draws from contemporary jazz, hip-hop, and electronica. Allusions to mortality are littered throughout the album, culminating in the elegiac closer “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” yet Blackstar isn’t a moribund meditation on mortality. It’s alive and vital, a testament to the enduring and nourishing power of art.
Maybe the bleakness of The Man Who Sold The World scared David Bowie because its sequel is its polar opposite: an open-hearted embrace of the possibility of love, punctuated by suggestions of darkness. Sometimes, these two extremes intertwine, as on “Oh! You Pretty Things,” a rousing pop tune that hints at a coming master race, but most of the album finds Bowie looking inside himself. He’s spending Hunky Dory sorting through major changes, commemorating his new fatherhood on the joyous “Kooks” then recasting it as his impending obsolescence on “Oh! You Pretty Things.” Bowie murmurs his worries on the mournful “Quicksand” but dread is pushed to the background on Hunky Dory, an album where the majestic romanticism of “Life On Mars?” serves as a centerpiece and odes to idols—Bowie writes a “Song For Bob Dylan” and one for “Andy Warhol,” then pounds away at the three chords of “Queen Bitch” so they resemble a Velvet Underground outtake by Lou Reed—are part of a raucous celebration of all manners of endearing oddities.
Strung out and fading away in a Los Angeles that didn’t care if he emerged intact from his dark night of the soul, David Bowie mustered up a masterwork in Station To Station. Shedding the softer elements of the plastic soul of Young Americans, Bowie presented himself as the Thin White Duke, a wastrel aristocrat who didn’t much care for peons and punters. It’s a persona that fuels “Station To Station,” an epic that creeps like a monolith until it explodes into catharsis—a pattern the rest of the record mimics. Each of its brief sides opens with futuristic soul, then recedes to art-funk before closing with a ballad that inadvertently reveals raw nerves Bowie fought hard to disguise. “Word On A Wing” and the cover of Nina Simone’s “Wild Is The Wind” find Bowie emotionally exposed, his soul shining through amidst a substance-drenched breakdown. It’s a definitive Bowie moment: a record where artifice and authenticity intertwine so thoroughly it seems like neither instinct could be trusted.
Decamping to Berlin in an attempt to get sober and creatively reinspired, David Bowie turned inward but he didn’t isolate. He lived with Iggy Pop, continuing a friendship that intensified when the pair recorded The Idiot in the summer of 1976 and struck up a creative partnership with Brian Eno, the art-rock wizard who had recently released Discreet Music, one of the pivotal records in ambient music. Eno’s fingerprints are all over the second side of Low, a sequence devoted to reflective electronic instrumentals that provide an extended sequence of introspection but are given emotional resonance when heard in conjunction with the art-pop of its first song. There, Bowie essays the depths of depression, the moments he spends alone in his blue room, remembering how he’s doomed to repeat cycles—to always crash in the same car—hoping for the deliverance of sound and vision. The thunder of the drums and the visceral thrill of the synths and guitar—the two combine in a brutal force—camouflage how Low essentially documents a depression while simultaneously providing a path forward. It’s a nifty trick that still seems wondrous years later.
There’s no avoiding it: The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars is the quintessential David Bowie album. Maybe he made records that were more fully realized—Low and Station To Station are prime contenders—but none of these would exist if it wasn’t for Ziggy Stardust, the album where Bowie invented the character that came to define his essence: a traveler from another dimension who looked upon our follies with an air of bemusement, then set out to disrupt them. There’s an apocalyptic undercurrent to Ziggy Stardust, thanks to the bookends of “Five Years” and “Rock & Roll Suicide,” yet the record itself kicks at the notion of gloom, offering moments as transcendent as “Starman” and primal as “Star,” an ode to the power of rock & roll. Purportedly a concept album, The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars is better seen as a vibe, a place where Bowie could bend concepts of sexuality, spirituality, and space with a sly wink that suggested he was concealing more than he was revealing—a calculated move that became his artistic signature no matter the sound or style he chose.