This Best David Bowie Albums listicle is probably one of the best ways we could think of to celebrate Bowie’s 75th birthday. We wanted to share personal reflections on these albums and thus limited the selection to five stone cold classics. in our humble opinion. Also, we bit the bullet and ordered this list according to merit. Here goes nothing….
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The Best David Bowie Songs of All Time. Now it does not get more poignant than this one. Bowie’s birthday is 8th January. He would have been 74 years old this year. The fact that he passed away two days later five years ago is still heart-wrenching. It’s no exaggeration to declare that Bowie is one of my favourite artists and his art will certainly live forever.
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Station to Station is the opening track on David Bowie’s classic 1976 album of the same name. Clocking in at over 10 minutes, Station to Station is Bowie’s longest studio recording and is seen as a pivotal landmark in Bowie’s musical development in the 1970s. That decade was a seminal epoch for many influential rock genres and Bowie had his finger on the pulse of most of them!
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It is the 50th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s second album, The Man Who Sold the World. To celebrate this landmark, Parlophone have released a new remix of the album by Tony Visconti. David Bowie – Metrobolist was in fact the original title of the album till it was changed at the last minute to The Man Who Sold the World.
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BOWIE: A BIOGRAPHY
by Marc Spitz
An assertion that David Bowie (nee Jones) has been the biggest influence on new bands and new music of the last four decades, would not draw much objections from rock scholars. But is that enough to fill a voluminous biography of the great man? The simple answer is “yes”, but writer Marc Spitz goes a little more deeper, inserting the impact that Bowie has had on his personal life as well.
Back in 1980, singer-songwriter Billy Joel was already railing against the stratification of rock & pop music.
On this day last year, Davie Bowie celebrated his 69th birthday by releasing Blackstar. Two days later, he was gone …
The legendary David Bowie thrilled all his fans with his fabulous comeback album The Next Day back in 2013 and diehards have been hoping and praying that the LP was not a one-off. Thankfully, Bowie is back with a new album for 2016 – Blackstar!
Rock legend David Bowie was a bit of a late bloomer in the business of rock ’n’ roll. Even though he was only 17 years old when he released his debut single in 1964, he would never achieve commercial success and critical acclaim till the 70s. His first three solo albums failed to set the music world alight and in fact, Hunky Dory – which would become his fourth LP – started life as a demo to secure a new recording contract, which he duly did with RCA Records.
Hunky Dory finds Bowie in pure singer-songwriter mode – which was in vogue around the time – thus, the individual songs are quite strong and the production values rather straightforward – with simple pop-rock/folk-rock instrumentation and arrangements by and large.
Backing Bowie would be the musicians that would subsequently form The Spiders from Mars (with the exception of Rick Wakeman on piano) viz. Mick Ronson (guitars, mellotron), Trevor Bolder (bass, trumpet) and Mick Woodmansey (drums).
Many of Bowie’s classic material – “Changes”, “All You Pretty Things”, “Life on Mars?” “Quicksand” and “Kooks” (written for his son, Zowie – director Duncan Jones) – were recorded during this fecund period. The second half had Bowie pay tribute to his heroes viz. Andy Warhol (“Andy Warhol”), Bob Dylan (“Song For Bob Dylan”) and Lou Reed (“Queen Bitch”) whilst “The Bewley Brothers” concerned Bowie’s relationship with his mentally disturbed brother, Terry.
After Hunky Dory, Bowie would adopt the persona of Ziggy Stardust and found fame and fortune and the rest of his 70s would see Bowie acting out different roles, played out on his discography.
So perhaps, on Hunky Dory, fans could see Bowie for who he was – before he decided to change the face of rock music irretrievably.
Last year David Bowie shocked the world with the release of a new single (“Where Are We Now?”)/album (The Next Day) after years of silence and relative inactivity. Well, it didn’t take long for Bowie to return with another new single/album did it? The single is “Sue (Or In a Season of Crime) which was given its world premiere on BBC Radio Six by DJ Guy Garvey, a couple of days ago. Of course, the song is all over the internet now – check it out below.
Regular PoP visitors will be aware of the fact that I am a huge Bowie fan and was greatly disappointed when I missed the David Bowie Is exhibitions organized by the Victoria & Albert Museum, when I was in London last year with TypeWriter.
So imagine my delight when I learned of a documentary about the exhibition that not only highlighted its various exhibits but also included various experts chiming in with personal experiences and opinions on the influence of Bowie on modern pop culture.
At the same time, it felt me with grave regret at missing the exhibition and hoping for a chance to get a crack at it one day in the future. But in the meantime, this documentary is a splendid way to whet the appetite. In any case, the documentary is essential for all Bowie fans and any serious scholar of art and pop culture.
Tickets are now available for online purchase at over 80 cinemas across the U.S. The film is scheduled to screen on one day, Tuesday, September 23, 2014, with additional cinemas being added to the list on a regular basis. Simultaneously, the V&A exhibition in London will be opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (MCA) on that same Tuesday as well.
Was 2013 a good year for popular music? It all depends on your definition of a ‘good year’. I believe that since the end of the 90s, the decline in the quality of popular music being written and recorded has been alarming. Compared to the previous 40 years, it’s fair to say that much of the popular music that has come out of the new millennium has been – with some exceptions, of course – largely forgettable.
