David Bowie in the 1990s - S/D

has this been done already?

these are my keepers -
jump they say
miracle good night
dont let me down and down
i know its gonna happen someday
buddha of suburbia
untitled no 1
the mysteries
ian fish
strangers when we meet (outside version)
a small plot of land
the motel
voyeur of utter destruction
wishful beginnings
we prick you
im deranged (quite hard to break up the outside album tbh)
little wonder
last thing you should do
im afraid of americans
survive
brilliant adventure
the dreamers
we shall go to town
no one calls

search: almost everything on outside and earthling

don't quite love these as full records but they're always fun to think about: black tie/white noise and surrounding material ("real cool world"), buddha of suburbia

destroy or rerecord: hours

1. Outside is one of his major albums.

BTWN is half good to great.

I regard Bowie's career from 1984 - 2002 like a man lost in a wasteland, searching for the muse, and every record along the way gives him a piece of the key to unlock what he has lost. I regard Heathen as the real artistic comeback.

Best song of the 90s is probably Thursday's Child, and I can certainly understand people who want Hours re-recorded. I still haven't heard Tin Machine II.

I saw the Outside tour (the NIN one) and it was mighty good, but Earthling is the keeper album for me in comparison.

man no way is thursday’s child the best bowie song of the 90s that is nonsense

better than strangers when we meet?!!

sympathetic to the idea that someone would prefer earthling out of them all. i’m an outside person but every time i hear earthling i remember it’s really consistent and full of great melodies. feel like “dead man walking” is particularly missed in the list opening this thread

They're both good songs, the chord changes in the chorus of Thursday's Child, and the way the backing singers highlight them, add to the feeling that Bowie is hitting some emotional spots he hadn't reached before (or in a long time).

Outside is his funniest album of the era! "Whoa! Quel courage!"

"Strangers When We Meet" is often my favorite Bowie ballad.

i prefer the rock remix of thursdays child. offsets some of that overblown weariness.

i quite like something in the air too. maybe it was hearing it in american psycho.

I regard Bowie's career from 1984 - 2002 like a man lost in a wasteland, searching for the muse, and every record along the way gives him a piece of the key to unlock what he has lost. I regard Heathen as the real artistic comeback.

totally - it's one of my favourite things about Bowie, that experience of watching him try and try and try to reclaim his 70s powers - inviting ridicule by being 40-something jungle guy or dressing like Marilyn Manson or whatever - constantly not getting it quite right - but he does get back to somewhere pretty substantial with 'Heathen' - and then IMO 'Blackstar' is absolutely able to stand with his best work

re 1984-2002 - I had pretty much checked out of Bowie by the end of the millennium but catching the VH-1 storytellers set was actually the beginning of my reconnecting with his work - and 'I found Thursday's Child' a standout in that set, even if the studio version has aged pretty poorly

I'm an "1. Outside" guy as well though "Earthling" has done a 180 in my estimation over the years.

"I'm Afraid Of Americans" is the real gem of the bunch, can listen to that on repeat for an hour.

How I ranked the albums in this period.

I forgot about dead against it....

I appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm but Outside doesn’t do anything for me, but I liked Earthling when it came out.

I want to like outside more than I do. It doesnt have major standouts but I can see why ppl admire it as its Bowie being ambitious, lofty, weird, and working with eno again. Hes inspired. But it only works for me though if you listen to it in one sitting. I can admire it more than I want to listen to it.

The beck remixes of seven are also well worth seeking out. Not sure why I put survive on there.

Outside is actually a tad try hard to my ears.... or just a bit over cooked.

I'm also in the want-to-like-Outside-more-than-I-do camp. For me, BlackStar, Heathen and Earthling are his best post-Scary Monsters albums, probably in that order

I remember on release day of Heathen during my lunch hour I went into Zavvi (could have still be Virgin at that time) in Bristol, walking up to a listening booth, putting on headphones and just really really hoping that I would enjoy what I was about to listen to.
within 30 seconds of the opening song, I had the 2cd edition in my hands and bought.
The album still sends shivers all over, I love it.
Outside I can rarely get through it all in one sitting.
Weirdly the one that has grown on me the most is Earthling as I had no time for d-n-b at the time.

I haven't actually listened to Heathen in years, I will rectify that today. Reality and The Next Day aren't too bad, but they are really just retreads of Heathen. And then we get the glorious and truly different Blackstar.

Bowie noughts vs Bowie tens is actually quite difficult: Heathen/Reality vs Next Day/Blackstar.

Heathen's the album that sounds like Bowie straining to make An Album for Our Times, but Visconti saves it.

Sifting through the 00s and 10s stuff was going to be my next lockdown project.

Spotify has the outside b side (?) my name which I like quite a bit. A lot of outside is very much about production I think which buries the songs a bit. Or maybe it's just more about the textures than the songs anyway.

Revisiting this stuff makes me wish Reznor or beck produced him in the 90s/00s rather than him going beck to old collaborators

*back lol

As good as the original songs on Heathen are, I'm surprised no one ever mentions how weighed down it is by three entirely pointless covers, a lesson not learned on Reality

To this day, I can't really remember more than a few songs from Hours, find it borderline unlistenable due the production, really ghastly overly-late 90s drum sounds and synth presets. Wish Bowie had requested a reboot of that one in addition to NLMD

"Cactus" is fun!

the thing about the post 2000 material is its so based around trad trudging mor rock with this irritating sheen from visconti all over it, it becomes a bit samey. i shouldve made this thread title so that it went 1990 to 2016.

i feel like several ppl itt need to spend even more time outside

Black Tie/White Noise is great! Def in the upper echelon of that era. Tried listening to Tin Machine’s debut recently and nope, still no good. Sad considering Bowie showed he could hard rock with Man Who Sold the World.

Not sure it could be great with "Looking for Lester," "Don't Ever Let Me Down and Down," "I Feel Free," and the horrifying guitar solo in the Morrissey cover; but "The Wedding," "Jump They Say" (a masterful single), "You've Been Around," and the Scott Walker cover soar.

his vocal on dont ever let me down and down is great! guitar solo aside, i still root for the morrissey cover.

its actually quite hard to pick from the later stuff but i came up with a playlist to avoid all the MOR radio 2 style rock on there. not including the black star album as it doesnt seem worth cherry picking from.

i would be your slave
515 the angels have gone
everyone says hi
a better future
heathen
a better future (air remix)
sunday (moby mix)
loneliest guy
shell drive the big car
days
fall dog bombs the moon
try some buy some
bring me the disco king
dirty boys (this is my personal favourite of all these songs tbh)
love is lost
where are we now?
valentines day
if you can see me (this is kind of a pair with killing a little time)
you feel so lonely you could die
heat
the informer
when i met you
no plan
killing a little time

no plan really is gorgeous.

Agreed.

no plan, dollar days, cant take everything away = stunning

Bring on the next box set!

https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/david-bowie-brilliant-adventure-1992-2001/

I'm more or less in line with consensus here..

love this era.
especially the d-n-b stuff that still sounds brilliant.
usual caveat : 'hours..' aint all that, but some of the remixes/versions are a lot better than the album.
also, no meat beat manifesto remix is a shame as would be nice for jack dangers to get the $$$

https://www.discogs.com/David-Bowie-Black-Tie-White-Noise/release/1056956

Here's the first move out of the '80s: choreographing a 1979 song to boring '80s dance moves but with Gabrels on lead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmKbD8oXKdk

I wish I saw what everyone else does in Outside. Not even the singles do for me what "Dead Man Walking" or "Jump They Say" do.

Surprising and a bit disappointing that this box doesn’t have the early version of outside! (The one I have is entitled “Leon”)

really glad Toy is getting a separate release.

Makes sense to leave the final box set for Heathen on - that's where he seemed to find his footing again, and I think he got better and better with each album, which made his passing all the more crushing. I'm not a big fan of his '90s work, but it was commendable as well as frustrating for me - it felt like he was more engaged and much more motivated to make better music again. I tempted to say hours had his sturdiest batch of songs of the decade on a basic musical level in terms of melodies and lyrics, but it was also his least interesting set of recordings whereas before it felt like he didn't write that many good songs but was much more bold and adventurous with his recording.

*I'm tempted to say

I agree, hours would have been a lot better received with different production; he sounded like he was trying to appeal to a mainstream that barely even existed in that sense in 1999.

he sounded like he was trying to appeal to a mainstream that barely even existed in that sense in 1999

I know what you mean. By the time I really knew of Bowie, at least as a musician (which was around Hours), he seemed like a middle-of-the-road artist coasting through middle age. Like, he did everything he could possibly do and seemed comfortable with that, to the point where he didn't have to adopt any more personas or continue to be daring. He was just a regular guy, and it came off that way on his frequent TV appearances. The heart attack really changed everything, and it's pretty amazing how this renewed mystique gradually built up around him simply because he decided to step away from his career and focus on raising his daughter.

What's interesting about birdistheword's post (to me, at least) is that the "middle-of-the-road artist coasting" comment seems somewhat fitting when it comes to "Hours" (an album I actually think is better than its reputation suggests -- I even prefer it to "Black Tie White Noise" and "Outside"), but when you look at the two albums before it (and even "Heathen", I'd argue), he certainly didn't sound like a legend coasting -- in fact, much like in the '70s and early '80s, he was continuously reinventing himself (whether he was going industrial on "Outside" or techno on "Earthling", the latter of which remains my favorite Bowie album that came out between 1983 and 2013) -- so to see him more settled (for lack of a better term) on "Hours" was definitely surprising.

Just an (utterly useless) observation of mine.

I haven't listened to any of these albums in ages, but as a recall their biggest pluses and minuses is that they all sound very much of their respective times. Which is kind of a compliment for an artist rooted in the '60s and '70s, but the times didn't necessarily do him any favors. I have utter faith that were he still around today he would be making some of the best music of his career for the duration of his life.

the "middle-of-the-road artist coasting" comment seems somewhat fitting when it comes to "Hours," but when you look at the two albums before it, he certainly didn't sound like a legend coasting

I would definitely agree with this, he clearly was listening to new sounds (drum 'n' bass, jungle) or willing to reunite with Brian Eno and experiment as they once did (but in a new way). I was completely unaware of those albums though, and it's not surprising when they pretty much flopped in the U.S. My first exposure to Bowie was basically the guy with the blonde hair doing his classics (or Hours) on Saturday Night Live behind Jerry Seinfeld or popping up on Conan and playing along in his comedic bits. For a little while, he didn't seem like he was all that hungry or restless.

Also remember his internet forums and Bowie Net? I never joined but IIRC he was even an active participant on there. That helped bring his image down to earth.

If anything, the albums released from 1993-2004 show him too hungry and restless.