Bowie’s catalog is a tough one to assess over the long haul. He continued to make excellent albums up until his death in 2016, but from the mid-80s on his records didn’t have the cultural shock value of his classic 70s releases. David the chameleon was likely to re-use and re-hash his own earlier musical ideas by the 90s, rather than inventing something brand new every time. That doesn’t mean he didn’t create some damn fine albums in his later career, they just don’t sound as groundbreaking as the ones that shot him to superstardom and kept him there for so long, so my final list leans heavily toward the classics. There are still a few that are making my heart ache to leave out – Blackstar and David Live come to mind – but this is the most primal list I can come up with. The seasoned Bowie fan will notice the absence of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, but I’m convinced that the voice he found on that record matured and became more mind-blowing over his next couple of albums. I can confidently say that when I want to hear Dave, I choose something from this list 99.9% of the time. The ranked order more or less reflects how many times I’ve heard each album.
The David Bowie Discography – I used Wikipedia’s discography list again, plus my fingers and toes for counting, and came up with 27 official studio albums, 17 live albums, 45 stand-alone hits compilations (!), 10 box sets, and 3 soundtracks (I’m leaving out the two Tin Machine records, they’re not under his name and they wouldn’t make my final list anyway because they kinda suck). After struggling over what should make the list and then ranking them, I realized my essentials list would have to be a top eleven this time. Adding one more took away a great deal of angst over the final cuts.
1. Aladdin Sane (1973) – Ziggy Stardust was a fantastic promise of greatness to come, and he delivered in a huge way on his next album. Louder and more urgent-sounding than Ziggy, probably due to his record company’s pressure to quickly follow up his first international hit record, it was conceived during his first extended visit to the U.S. and partially recorded in NYC. There’s a definite Rolling Stones connection to this one, the opener “Watch that Man” sounds like them, and the “Let’s Spend the Night Together” cover is them, albeit in Bowie’s rather perverse version. “The Jean Genie” was supposedly written about his new American pal Iggy Pop. The Spiders from Mars are still his band for a little longer, but with the addition of Mike Garson on piano, who adds jazzy, artsy keyboard shards that elevate the songs to another planet. In the middle of side one, vinylly-speaking, lurks the amazing “Drive-In Saturday,” reason enough to put this at the top.
EARWORM: “Drive-In Saturday” – If you’re even a casual Bowie fan, this one is a must-hear. Loosely based on American doo-wop music, with a fantastic vocal performance.
2. Hunky Dory (1971) – So perfect, and perfectly weird. The record that came before Hunky Dory, the surprisingly hard rock The Man Who Sold the World, had exactly nobody prepared for this whiplash change of direction. Not the last time he’d pull that one off, right? An art-pop record that would probably be too theatrical sounding if every damn song wasn’t a stone pop classic. Bowie dramatically ups his lyrical and melodic gifts on this album and every quirky arrangement/production choice hits home. Rick Wakeman’s brilliantly obtuse piano is smeared across the LP and Dave’s in exceptional voice. Decadent, folky, biting, and dream-like. Ch-ch-changes.
EARWORM: “Life on Mars?” – I could have picked anything from the album, but how could I pass up Bowie’s most astonishing ballad?
3. Young Americans (1975) – Bowie called this his “plastic soul” record at the time. An exceedingly thin white Brit dabbling in music modeled on the classic Philly soul sound probably shouldn’t have worked. But this is Dave we’re talking about here and it not only works, it’s another enduring classic. Young Americans opens with the breathtaking title song and closes with the equally impressive “Fame.” Everything in between is lower-key, but no less memorable. Bowie’s creation of gliding, compelling R&B grooves feels effortless, and he sings beautifully. Songs like “Right” and “Fascination” might seem slight on the first go-round, but their hooks, musicianship and vocal arrangements are anything but, and sink in every bit as deeply as the better-known hits. Toss in backup vocals by then-unknown Luther Vandross and the somewhat more well-known John Lennon, and you have an album every Bowie fan should hear if they somehow missed it.
EARWORM: “Fascination” – A sublime example of what “plastic soul” means.
4. The Man Who Sold the World (1970) – Bowie’s only real hard rock record, and it’s a great one. “Space Oddity” had finally given him the hit he had been chasing and TMWSTW was the follow-up album. It was the first of Dave’s many commercial curveballs, sounding nothing like Space Oddity. He traded in the overt acoustic folkiness that got Space Oddity into the top 20 in both the U.S. and U.K. for the first appearance of guitarist Mick Ronson and the proto-Spiders from Mars. What they came up with is a solid contender for the first heavy metal album – slashing and power-chording electric guitars, heavy-sounding bass and drums, big arena choruses. But Bowie had yet to fully separate himself from the British folk-rock leanings of the previous record, so you end up with one of the quirkiest, and greatest, heavy metal records ever. Ronson introduces himself as an electric guitarist with something original to say on the fever-dream opener “Width of a Circle” and never lets up. His work on this album matches any of the so-called U.K. “guitar gods” of the 60s and early 70s. A lot of music fans say they prefer Kurt Cobain’s cover of the title song on Nirvana Unplugged, but not me. The original is another integral part of the fascinating, rocking odd universe of TMWSTW. A great addition to Unplugged, for sure, but it lives right here.
EARWORM: “Black Country Rock” – Evidence that TMWSTW is a hard rock record, albeit a decidedly odd one.
5. Station to Station (1976) – The artist was pretty strung out in 1976, reports have him living on cocaine and peppers for much of it. He looked at the time like the thinnest, whitest duke possible. Bowie claimed later to not remember the recording of Station to Station, he’s quoted as saying he only knows it was recorded in L.A. because he read it was. The cover photo is a still from his starring role in The Man Who Fell to Earth, a film he also said he didn’t remember making. And yet, Station to Station is undeniably one of his greatest records. He took the “plastic soul” music of Young Americans and pumped it up with electronics and krautrock and steroids, with a serving of paranoia on the side. The powerful dance grooves on Station to Station are relentless, the playing by his core band – Carlos Alomar, George Murray, and Dennis Davis – is exceptional, and against all odds Dave manages to turn in a stunning vocal performance. “Station to Station” opens the record with 10+ minutes of slow build that resolves into a final, gloriously catchy ending. The superbly danceable “Golden Years” was a big enough hit to land him on Cher’s TV show that year, and Bowie borrowed the E Street Band’s pianist Roy Bittan to play on “TVC15,” a robotically bouncy song many fans consider one of his greatest. Station to Station is a surprisingly cohesive record, every song fits and flows beautifully into the next one. That he pulled this album out of the fever of his most drug-wasted era is utterly remarkable. Despite the album’s success, Dave took off to Berlin at this point to get away from the L.A. music scene and get cleaned up, a move that likely saved his life.
EARWORM: “TVC15” – An impossibly catchy song about his girlfriend being swallowed up by a television set. Or she beamed herself to a satellite, it’s hard to be sure.
6. Diamond Dogs (1974) – The Spiders were no more at this point, Bowie plugged in his own electric guitar for most of the album and created a sort of fuzzy-headed dystopian glam rock record. It’s tough to figure out what the storyline means, if anything, but the songs are so weird and great it doesn’t matter. Three absolutely killer rock tracks - the title song, “Rebel Rebel,” and “1984” – provide a rocking backbone to Diamond Dogs, effectively offsetting nervous-sounding, dolorous ballads like “Sweet Thing” and “We Are the Dead.” “Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me,” on the other hand, is a ballad grounded more in the real world and is one of his finest. There’s a head-scratching sci-fi/fantasy vibe to the record that, while it ultimately feels irrelevant with songwriting of such high quality, actually becomes part of its lasting charm. My only beef with Diamond Dogs is the curiously thin-sounding production. If the songs packed more of the bass/drums wallop of their live versions on the subsequent tour, I believe I’d bump it up a notch or two on this list.
EARWORM: “Rebel Rebel” – Bowie’s less ornate electric guitar style compared to Mr. Ronson's fits perfectly. His scratchy, punky riff sears into the brain.
7. Pin Ups (1973) – The last, brilliant gasp of The Spiders from Mars. Bowie’s ambition and visions of grander things was pulling his band apart at the time. They spent their last days together recording a covers album of seminal British pop and rock singles. His drummer and bass player hadn’t been told the Spiders were ending until they heard Dave announce it from the stage at the end of their final concert together, so relations were strained, to say the least, during the Pin Ups recording session (drummer Mick Woodmansey declined to participate). A few of the songs they covered were familiar to his American fans – Them’s “Here Comes the Night,” The Who’s “I Can’t Explain” – but most were notable hits in the U.K., all but unknown here. Every song is a killer, introducing the U.S. audience to gems like Pink Floyd’s earliest hit single “See Emily Play,” the Easybeat’s “Friday on My Mind,” and especially the Merseys’ “Sorrow.” For being a done deal, the Spiders play wonderfully on Pin Ups and Dave’s singing is first-rate – lean, glammy hard rock as fresh and exciting as anything they had done prior. An essential outlier in Bowie’s catalog.
EARWORM: “Sorrow” – A great song when the Merseys did it, even greater in Dave’s slinky, propulsive version. A spotlight for his underrated sax playing, too.
8. Changesonebowie (1976) – If you’re kinda sorta a Bowie fan but don’t have the time or inclination to dive into his big, messy catalog, RCA released this laser-focused, concise greatest hits in the second half of the 70s. It barely scratches the surface of the astonishing creative leaps Bowie made between 1969 and 1976 and gets docked a few points for skipping The Man Who Sold the World entirely, but Changesonebowie is forty-four essential Dave minutes and a pure delight from start to finish. The selections and their running order just work. Don't confuse this one with Changesbowie, a later compilation from Rykodisc. The Ryko version is more extensive, but not nearly as perfect a listen.
EARWORM: “John, I’m Only Dancing” – An outtake from the Aladdin Sane sessions that RCA decided to include instead of something from Man Who Sold the World. I’d be more upset about the omission if this wasn’t such a great song.
9. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) – Probably the least well known of Bowie’s classic, essential albums. Some even call it his “last great album,” but I don’t buy that, there were more to come. You might recall that following the Station to Station session’s coked-out insanity, our boy Dave left the U.S. for Germany to hide from his fame for a while. While there he made his renowned “Berlin Trilogy” – Low, Heroes, and Lodger – a trio of LPs that gained him immense critical acclaim and lost him an immense number of fans. Critics loved the artsier, more electronic approach of the records; fans didn’t love that catchy hooks and melodies were in much shorter supply. Scary Monsters takes the studio effects Bowie learned from collaborators like Brian Eno and Robert Fripp in Berlin and marries them to his finest set of rock and pop songs in several years. “Ashes to Ashes” brought back his Major Tom character from “Space Oddity” and was a monster (get it?) MTV and radio hit. You also get the fabulous title song, “Fashion,” and my fave, “Up the Hill Backwards.” Nope, it doesn’t sound like Ziggy Stardust or Young Americans, there are a lot of electro-beats and treated guitar sounds (Fripp, in particular, fripps all over the place), but what it does sound like is another masterful Bowie album. Dave would end his long-time partnership with producer Tony Visconti after Scary Monsters and his career would go through a twenty-year erratic patch until they reunited.
EARWORM: “Up the Hill Backwards” – Some tribal drum sounds kicking things off, then Dave semi-chanting some brilliant lyrics over a thudding, but remarkably graceful, dance beat. One of his many overlooked classic songs.
10. Let’s Dance (1983) – The follow up to Scary Monsters and a worldwide smash hit. The beginning of his association with EMI records, which would end when they ran out of money several years later. Bowie chose to make Let’s Dance with Chic’s Nile Rodgers to hammer home the dance part and hired a mostly unknown guitar hotshot named Stevie Ray Vaughn. You know the massive sound and hits they came up with – “Let’s Dance,” “China Girl,” “Modern Love” – and the follow-up tour dubbed Serious Moonlight was one of Dave's most successful. An undeniable turn toward the commercial after the semi-disappointing sales of Scary Monsters, Let’s Dance is a rollicking, left-of-center party record from start to finish.
EARWORM: “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” – Just because I love the way he sings the “with gasoliiiiiiiiiiiiiine” part.
11. Toy: Box (2022) – I’ve been so impressed with this one since it finally saw the light of day in January that I couldn’t leave it off this list. I also couldn’t drop anything else off the list to make room for it, so we’re stuck with an awkward Top Eleven. I’ve already posted a longer review of Toy, so I won’t go into its whole history again here. Briefly, it consists of re-recordings of some of Dave’s earliest singles and B-sides live in the studio with his 2000-era touring band. It was planned to be a surprise release for his fans, but EMI ran into financial trouble and shelved it. What strikes me about Toy, and makes me enjoy it so much, is how “60s London” the songs are and how much fun Dave sounds like he’s having making it. His singing is relaxed and superb on every song and the musicians totally lean into the simpler melodies and arrangements. The whole album is as much fun as I’ve had in a long while with new (so to speak) Bowie.
EARWORM: “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving” – I bounce back and forth about which song on Toy is my favorite. Right this moment it’s this one. Love the “ooh wha ooh”s of the backing vocals while the band rocks the hell out of it.
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