TS: Metallica's Black Album vs. David Bowie's Let's Dance

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Like we need more Metallica and Bowie threads here, but this is more about selling out than the albums themselves.

Overground cult figure and "the biggest underground band in America" both go for the megasales. Long time fans hold their heads and wonder what the hell happened.

― LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:00 (nineteen years ago)

I'd argue that Bowie was probably "cashing in" rather than "selling out" explicitly. Still, it was a head-scratcher after Scary Monsters (which I still love love love)

― LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:02 (nineteen years ago)

Though I think the Metallica fans win on "gut reaction vitriol"

― LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:03 (nineteen years ago)

I think it was more Load where the fans went ballistic. The Black album still got defended by some of the old fans (at the time).

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:09 (nineteen years ago)

Uh, yeah, cuz neither of them were making a lot of money before they made those albums.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:09 (nineteen years ago)

i HATED the black album when it came out but i've since come to terms with the heaviness of "enter sandman."

― jbr with a z (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:10 (nineteen years ago)

uh, abbadavid: Overground cult figure and "the biggest underground band in America" both go for the megasales.

― jbr with a z (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:10 (nineteen years ago)

TS: SRV guesting on guitar vs. twitchy old man in 'Unforgiven' video

― Edward Bax (EdBax), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:20 (nineteen years ago)

I dunno, sounds like splitting hairs to me.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:25 (nineteen years ago)

basically "people who were already rich/famous become even more rich/famous"

― jbr with a z (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:27 (nineteen years ago)

Well, maybe my memory is distorting things -- I mean I remember Metallica seeming huge when And Justice For All came out, and I was only in 6th grade, but then I guess Black Album really had the hits in a way that AJFO didn't at all.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:29 (nineteen years ago)

And I'm too young to have perspective on exactly how big Bowie was before Let's Dance (but he had had some enormous hits, I reckon)

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:30 (nineteen years ago)

Well, all members of Metallica and Bowie had interesting hair at the time, for starters.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 4 May 2006 02:05 (nineteen years ago)

At least "Let's Dance" had some good songs on it.

― vartman (novaheat), Thursday, 4 May 2006 03:16 (nineteen years ago)

'Metallica', 'Permanent Vacation', 'Dr Feelgood' --> Canadian producers kill bands

― dave q (listerine), Thursday, 4 May 2006 07:36 (nineteen years ago)

Did either of them consciously think "I'm going to go for the megasales?"

Doesn't this imply that they were capable of being hugely successful earlier in their careers but had deliberately not been?

I don't buy that with either artist. Metallica's ever-increasing success feels like it had more to do with changes in the Metal audience over their career. Bowie, in the UK at least, had had a stack of hit singles and arguably had already tried his Let's Dance schtick on Young Americans. And as a bloke whose willingness to jump on the next scene is a huge cliche, there doesn't seem anything surprising or more calculated than usual about the sound of LD.

― My Vileness Is a Dream (noodle vague), Thursday, 4 May 2006 07:55 (nineteen years ago)

at least the black album has a decent bass sound - all Let's Dance has going for it is a shitty cover of an Iggy Pop song & "Modern Love"

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Thursday, 4 May 2006 09:37 (nineteen years ago)

The Black Album was the first Metallica album I ever bought, although I listened to the two or three previous albums quite a bit. (I had three roommates during college and we all owned a different album. At the time, I really didn't perceive it as a "sell out" so much as what they said it was -- an interest in trying shorter and more concise song forms. I mean, where else were they to go at that point?

If by "sell out" you mean sell a lot of records, then my vote would be with Bowie. I have a difficult time seeing Let's Dance as abandoning "artistic credibility" or whatever, given how often he had change over his career, and some of the pointless dreck that came later on.

― someone let this mitya out! (mitya), Thursday, 4 May 2006 14:25 (nineteen years ago)

let's dance is no more of a sell out album than young americans was. it's better than that album too. Tonight might have been a sell out though; produced quickly for maximum commercial appeal, and brining nothing new to the table.

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 4 May 2006 16:17 (nineteen years ago)

This is a pretty uneven contest:

Let's Dance
+ Nile Rogers as producer/guitar
+ Bernard Edwards/Tony Thompson, one of the finest rhythm sections in music history on bass/drums
+ Giorgio Moroder doing the music for Cat People
+ an Iggy Pop leftover/heroin tribute

Black Album
+ Bob Rock (Bon Jovi, Cher, Britney Spears, etc.)

― Steve Shasta (Steve Shasta), Thursday, 4 May 2006 16:27 (nineteen years ago)

I'd always heard that Bowie had blown through all the money he had made by 1978 or so, so he had to, in essence, start over on the kids' college fund etc.

I think the black album only looks bad for what came after it. at the time, and now, i think it's pretty good, tho I never listen to it anymore...

― Billy Pilgrim (Billy Pilgrim), Thursday, 4 May 2006 16:27 (nineteen years ago)

at least the black album has a decent bass sound - all Let's Dance has going for it is a shitty cover of an Iggy Pop song & "Modern Love"

-- Thomas Tallis (tallis4...), Today 3:37 AM. (Tommy)

I have no idea if this is a joke or not, but you made me laugh!

― Steve Shasta (Steve Shasta), Thursday, 4 May 2006 16:28 (nineteen years ago)

Bowie was always a pop star - the concept of him selling out is a bit absurd. Either way, Let's Dance was as highly stylized as anything else he'd done, and it doesn't sound much like other records put out at the time. Sometimes I think people who criticize it have just heard the singles outside the context of the whole album.

I became a Bowie fan in '81, and I'd say that by the time Let's Dance came out, there was a perception that he was washed up. It surprised me when the album became a success. The lead single ("Let's Dance") was a little odd sounding for top 40 - but he was made for MTV (or was it made for him?) so their fortunes were intertwined I guess...

― Edward III (edward iii), Thursday, 4 May 2006 17:47 (nineteen years ago)

I read conflicted responses to the Let's Dance phenom. David Buckley's bio quotes several fans who admitted relief and even pride when their boy went mega in 1983 (yes, he became a star with Young Americans, but LD spun three Top 15 hits and rode the Top 40 for most of the year), as in, "The rest of the world has finally caught up with him." These fans saw LD as yet one more phase: the Thin White Plutocrat, couring lucre and deserving it, thank you very much.

Sadly, of course, when the world caught up with him, he had nothing much to say for the rest of the decade.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 4 May 2006 19:07 (nineteen years ago)

Well Bowie's not stupid and he'd spent the past few years making weirdo art records and probably knew he was about to enter a lean creative period. Why not make the big bucks and coast onward?

― Washable School Paste (sexyDancer), Thursday, 4 May 2006 19:17 (nineteen years ago)

You all know what is trying to be proposed here--"going for the brass ring" is the best shorthand. Making the jump to the highest level.

Black Album
+ Bob Rock (Bon Jovi, Cher, Britney Spears, etc.)

So Metallica wins then?

― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 4 May 2006 19:24 (nineteen years ago)

metallica never did a "coffee achiever" ad (w/ kurt vonnegut and cicely tyson!), so therefore their sellout/cash-in wasn't as great as bowie's.

OTOH, "enter sandman" is a better song than "let's dance."

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Thursday, 4 May 2006 19:55 (nineteen years ago)

OTOH, "enter sandman" is a better song than "let's dance."

Geir, is that you?

― Steve Shasta (Steve Shasta), Thursday, 4 May 2006 22:22 (nineteen years ago)

i was a big metallica fan as a kid (and still am)..and the black album felt like a real betrayal back then...i can't imagine any bowie fans were that suprised by let's dance (or even cared)...or at least i can't imagine they cared as much as i cared back then.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 4 May 2006 22:24 (nineteen years ago)

and, in hindsight, the black album is pretty okay actually.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 4 May 2006 22:25 (nineteen years ago)

All my friends were huge Bowie freaks when Let's Dance dropped (juniors & seniors in high school at the time), and, with one exception, they were ll terribly embarassed by Let's Dance. The one exception came around the everybody else's position eventually. The drum sound is actually kinda cool 'n' all, but the songs are shitty compared to all five of the Bowie albums that precede it (and probably the five before that, too, it's just I'm thinkin' Young Americans -> Heroes -> Low -> Lodger -> Scary Monsters...and then Let's Dance? precipitous quality drop there)

also, whatever character he's supposed to have been affecting, it didn't have any flesh on it. "The guy in the peach suit" < ziggy et al

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Thursday, 4 May 2006 22:35 (nineteen years ago)

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TS: Metallica's Black Album vs. David Bowie's Let's Dance - the art of the sell out