What's the best David Bowie studio album

Cuz it doesn't have enough range and, when called upon to emote in settings demanding commitment it often signals his commitment to the genre instead of the emotion he's trying to convey.

Anyway, how weird that "Hunky Dory" won this, I think Geir rigged the poll.

Ha well clearly the time for the DD reappraisal is Not Yet - although I must say I do like the sax (and like even more Bowie's brutal guitar playing).

Totally agree that TMWSTW is another one that is overlooked/underrated - possibly partly because it didn't have a "marquee" song/single until the Nirvana cover? But when I was a teen I was completely besotted with that one, great songs, great band, amazing SOUND. It has that kind of entropic New Worlds SF darkness that I also associate with Hawkwind and VDGG.

1. Outside is a near masterpiece imo

Outside is so unreal, my favourite Bowie album (though Hunky Dory, Station To Station and Black Star are right up there). My only strike against it (aside from "Hallo Spaceboy" which doesn't do much for me, and yet I prefer it to any of the dud covers on the 70s albums) is a kind-of cheeseball quality in the synthesis of plot and lyric, which I find charming in the same way I find 80s Michael Mann movies charming, but not necessarily engrossing. The lyrics on "Oxford Town" and "Heart's Filthy Lesson" are, to me, sound like they've been typed up in the same font as the cover of Billy Idol's Cyberpunk.

The real winner on TMWSTW is the opening track, "A Width Of A Circle", Bowie never told a better long-form narrative imo, it's all the failures on Space Oddity corrected.

And I don't think it's weird at all that Hunky Dory won... it's wall-to-wall hits. I remember in the 90s, "Quicksand" won 2nd in a Bowie fansite poll for his best song, after "Ashes To Ashes". Even the lesser tracks ("Andy Warhol", "Song For Bob Dylan") are really solid! "Kooks" is prob my favourite "hey guys, we had a kid!" song in existence. Again, it's only the cover song that I would scuttle, aside from a few tracks on "Pin-Ups" I think Bowie's a bad interpreter across the board.

And ya that unfortunately includes "Wild Is The Wind", never liked it :(

idk "fill your heart" is really charming imo, and in any case it's not the "interpretation" that's to blame; have you ever tried to sit through biff rose's original ? it's not exactly pleasant.

i would've voted for "hunky dory" in 2007, as a high school kid, and still would today. it's always been my favorite. "wall-to-wall hits" otm

Hunky Dory is perhaps his most consistent album, and the one where he truly found his voice imo, but maybe a bit of a boring choice?

Talking of boring, there's "Song For Bob Dylan".

idk "fill your heart" is really charming imo, and in any case it's not the "interpretation" that's to blame; have you ever tried to sit through biff rose's original ? it's not exactly pleasant.

Pretty pointless doing this song at all after Tiny Tim's version.

these days my fav bowie is station to station, but i think hunky dory is still probably the one i'd give to someone who'd never heard bowie before. it doesn't really give any hint of his later sound but it's probably his most immediately accessible and enjoyable album in a lot of ways.

Let's not forget what a seductively queer album Hunky Dory is for its era - "Oh You Pretty Things", "Life on Mars", "Queen Bitch" ooze androgyne eros, but the songs are so catchy it slipped through and left the door open for Queen. But yeah my (mid teen) daughters took this one to heart and are only exploring the others gradually.
Right now ★ is getting me through an evening of work, what a towering achievement.

and "Quicksand" is such a singular tune. No one else could've written it.

and the way "Kooks" queers a father-son relationship

Yeah I feel like we're really lucky that we got that album, it feels like the perfect hybrid of "I'm now a confident songwriter" and "I have not yet become cynical". "Queen Bitch" is really the biggest and best thing, T. Rex could never

i dislike the production and arrangements on Diamond Dogs quite a bit. It's screechy cluttered sounding.

my favorite albums bookend the Berlin trilogy: Station to Station and Scary Monsters.

Station To Station is a top-five Bowie album in my books for half-of-it alone. I am cool on "Stay" and don't like "Word" or "Wild" but the title track, "Golden Years" and "TVC15" make it an utter classic

"Station To Station" is inarguably (in my mind) Bowie's greatest single song, and the album itself is so weird both in its content and the context within which it was created that it sits next to Big Star 3 in my books

I go like this:

9.5 Outside
9 Station To Station
9 Hunky Dory
9 Black Star
8.5 Lodger
8.5 Ziggy Stardust
8 Low
8 Aladdin Sane
8 The Man Who Sold The World
7.5 Scary Monsters
7.5 Earthling
7.5 The Next Day
6.5 Young Americans
6.5 Diamond Dogs
6 Tin Machine
6 Heathen
6 Let's Dance
5.5 "Heroes"
4 Reality
4 Space Oddity
2 Hours
1 Black Tie White Noise
1 Never Let Me Down
0 Tonight
Tin Machine II

'Stay' is top 5 Bowie for me

Oh, Tin Machine II is also a zero, hell is listening to the Sales brothers sing

The Hague

Tonight
Hours
Tin Machine

Meh

Pin Ups
Never Let Me Down
The Next Day
Tin Machine II

Sound, Solid

Young Americans
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Diamond Dogs
The Buddha of Suburbia
The Man Who Sold the World
Reality
Earthling
Heathen
Black Tie White Noise
Let's Dance

Good to Great

Low
Station to Station
★
Lodger
Aladdin Sane
"Heroes"
Hunky Dory
Outside
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Good ranking Alfred, I'm gonna give Buddha and Black Tie another shot today

I think Let's Dance is a better album than it generally gets credit for - deep cuts Ricochet and Criminal World are excellent, slinky funk-pop.

"Ricochet" is Bowie trying to hold fast to a sense of avant-gardism for which he (temporarily) lost an attraction.

my favorite albums bookend the Berlin trilogy: Station to Station and Scary Monsters.

― akm, Monday, 1 June 2020 14:23 (thirty minutes ago) link

This is me as well. I feel like voting for Scary Monsters is like my love for Flesh & Blood in the Roxy Music poll; there are better or more important Bowie albums, but I played Scary Monsters so so so much when it came out. Hugely important in my life.

I don't believe I've ever heard a note of Outside. Putting that on my to do list.

and the way "Kooks" queers a father-son relationship

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 1, 2020 5:58 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes !

the bowie songs on TMII are great. I've skipped over the Sales songs consistently since the album came out.

let's dance is a wonderful album. if only he hadn't tried to follow it up with a 'soundalike' album that didn't sound like it and was super weak as far as songs

"Goodbye Mr. Ed" and "Shopping for Girls" >>>>>>>>>>>>>> the first Tin Machine album

I have a weird relationship to Tin Machine— I seem to be the lone asserted that “Reeves Gabrels was Bowie’s best guitarist”, iirc that was the case when it was polled.

My adoration for Gabrels is not just the fact that he technically stands head and shoulders above Alomar and Ronson— and Fripp never really cut loose on a Bowie album— Gabrels was taken on during the most challenging imaginable comeback, Bowie in his 40s, trying to be a “lad” and failing, then trying to do pop-industrial (and knocking it out of the park), then trying to do rock-jungle (and turning in an admirable effort). (Hours, the album, does not exist to me— I listened to it once and never again.)

So, Tin Machine tries so hard, and does a lot right, and Gabrels (in particular) is carrying much of the weight, but it’s where it falls short that destroys it and makes it “legacy souring”. Bowie has always been a thief, but with Tin Machine he is along Black Francis so excruciatingly, and getting it so wrong, that it’s absolute toxic waste music. The worst offender afaic “Baby Universal”— it’s the sound of a standup comedian doing bad impressions, a grotesque misinterpretation of What Is Good about early Pixies, Charles frankly should have lodged a complaint

*aping, not along

You seem to have quite a lot of eccentric opinions when it comes to Bowie, if you don't mind me saying so.

Just bc I listen extensively and deeply and disagree with dogmatic precepts about Bowie's discography doesn't make me eccentric. I still fundamentally like all the same albums everybody else likes (I just think Outside is really the best), and dislike the same albums albums everybody else dislikes (except Heroes which I think is garbage aside from the title track)

I was moved to try and recall an old Bowie website that had polls on his best songs and albums, conducted in the 90s-- this was the poll that ranked "Ashes To Ashes" as #1 and "Quicksand" as #2. I couldn't remember anything about the website except that the webmaster described Mick's guitar on Aladdin Sane as "the sound of a guitar smashing atoms in the basement". So I Googled "smashing atoms in the basement". This was the sole result:

Internet nostalgia

Versatility isn't a be-all end-all, but Alomar's as a funk guitarist who abjured most fun cliches, not to mention the protean way in which he forced the material to accommodate to him on albums as different as Low and 1. Outside, impresses the hell out of me.

A lot of Gabrels' work grates, but that's the point -- Bowie wanted ugly sounds.

fun = funk

lol

a little confused by fgti's dislike of heroes, i don't think it's as good as the two before it but it's still certainly a top 5 bowie album for me. i really love "beauty and the beast".

on the other hand i've always felt hunky dory is quite overrated. it's solid enough but i've never thought of it as a masterpiece as many seem to. the section from "fill your heart" through to "song for bob dylan" is pretty weak and only "quicksand" is really up there with my favourite bowie songs.

what was bowie's favorite of his own albums?

Strikes me as the sort of guy who just answer, "The last one".

nice to see lodger creeping up the lists (lists nevertheless remaining bad)

or "the lodger" as i inexplicably titled it when i pitched for its full reappraisal 18 long years ago: Is THE LODGER David Bowie's best record?

The Hunky Dory just ahead The Low according to ILX.

what was bowie's favorite of his own albums?

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, June 1, 2020

The Buddha of Suburbia.

I love "Beauty And The Beast". I love "Heroes"-- two top-class songs. The rest of the album is completely forgettable and/or actively awful ("Joe The Lion", "...Arabia"). I feel like "Heroes" popularity upon release was people making up for being non-plussed by Low, maybe?

I just mistyped just now and feel compelled to name my own next album "Herpes"

"Joe the Lion" would make my top ten of Bowie songs tah-day. The Fripp intro is one of his and Bowie's best.

I had a conversation with Bowie and Garson in 2005 where I spoke about how much I admired Outside and asked if he'd ever consider revisiting that sound, songs from that album, and they both got really excited by the suggestion, and said they'd had conversations exactly to that effect. I know Bowie felt Earthling was way better than people gave him credit for, and I tend to agree. And I don't know Alfred if you're being facetious but I think you're actually correct, I think I remember reading that Bowie rated that album highly-- I actually have never heard it at all :o

My top 3 Bowie albums would be 'Diamond Dogs', 'Low' & 'Outside'. Nothing really out of the ordinary there.

But as for my more unusual opinions, one album I'd immediately put into the next tier would be the dreamy, pretty thing known as 'Space Oddity' - this is one that doesn't get enough acclaim in my opinion. I love it to bits.

I have to say that think quite highly of 'Never Let Me Down' - I like it much better than Bowie himself did. I also think 'Tin Machine II' has a lot of really good songs on it, especially 'Amlapura' and 'Shopping for Girls'.

I still find value even in what I think to be his weakest work, which would probably be the first Tin Machine. 'Hours' is an album I praised massively when it was released but thought less and less of as time went by, to the point where I just felt disillusioned and came to think of it as Bowie's weakest; writing my initial reaction down to being a very naïve overoptimistic 19y old back then. However, in recent years it grew on me again, especially due to 'New Angels of Promise' and 'If I'm Dreaming My Life' - I'm quite loving those two tracks.

Great post fgti, I love Earthling too, especially that Wonder / Satellites / Letter / Tibet opening salvo. It shares a lot of DNA with ★.
I cannot fucking BELIEVE that The Man Who Sold the World is FIFTY years old now (like me). And Hunky Dory will be 50 next year. They seem 20 years old at most.

With all the goodwill for Outside it’s a shame that I missed his last date here which was on that tour (Dec 1995, I was 12); setlist was predictably heavy on the new album along with various 70s staples

I'll try a "Consumer Guide" style assessment, leaving out the ones I've yet to explore in-depth:

David Bowie (1967) - dud
David Bowie (1969, a.k.a. Space Oddity) - choice cut: "Space Oddity"
The Man Who Sold The World - ("The Width of a Circle," "All the Madmen," "Black Country Rock" and the title track) **
Hunky Dory - A
The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - A
Live Santa Monica '72 - A
Aladdin Sane - A
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - film gets an A-, soundtrack is a B+
Pin-Ups - ("Sorrow") *
Diamond Dogs - choice cuts: title track and "Rebel Rebel." I strongly prefer the outtake "1984/Dodo" (with Ronson et al) over what was used here
David Live - C
Young Americans - (title track, "Fame") ***, try to get a version with the outtakes from "The Gouster" (but not the alternate mixes, which are disposable)
Station To Station - A
Live Nassau Coliseum '76 - A
Low - A
"Heroes" - A
Stage - B
Welcome to the Blackout (Live London '78) - A
Lodger - A-
Scary Monsters - A
Let's Dance - choice cuts: title track, "China Girl," "Modern Love" (you're not really missing anything if you have to settle for 45 edits), but some reissues helpfully include "Under Pressure"
Tonight - choice cuts: "Blue Jean," "Loving the Alien," but reissues helpfully include "This Is Not America" and "Absolute Beginners" as bonus tracks
Never Let Me Down - choice cut: title track, maybe "Day-In Day-Out" and the 'MM Remix' of "Time Will Crawl" for those who really want to dig further for gems
Tin Machine - Neither
Tin Machine 2 - Neither
Black Tie White Noise - choice cuts: "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday," "Jump They Say"
1. Outside - Neither, the single version of "Hallo Spaceboy" (remixed by the Pet Shop Boys) is charming if innocuous
Earthling - choice cuts: "Little Wonder," "I'm Afraid of Americans" (the latter best-heard and best-known for the single version remixed by Trent Reznor)
'hours...' - choice cut: "Thursday's Child"
"Heathen" - ("Slow Burn," "Afraid," "Everyone Says 'Hi'") ** (basically the first album since SCARY MONSTERS that might be worth having)
"Reality" - ("New Killer Star," "Never Get Old," "She'll Drive the Big Car," "Bring Me the Disco King") **
A Reality Tour - the concert DVD is an A-, as 'legacy' tours go, you can't do much better
The Next Day - B+
Blackstar - A-