Defend the indefensible: Bowie's Never Let Me Down

i'd be down for a non-Reeves version of Hours too but since he cowrote the whole thing that seems pretty unlikely

there’s def a legit alternate version of hours that could be pieced together already

i'm not even sure some of the songs are really strong enough on hours to make doing that worth it. I like boring adult-alternative Thursday's Child and...that's about it.

That album reminds me a lot of ...however you call it, Prince's first non-Prince album, the Symbol album. Good in theory, not very interesting to listen to.

hours... is really the only album I out-and-out dislike from his run from Outside to Blackstar. I find it a bit harsh on Love Symbol to be compared with hours..., though. Love Symbol is in a different league entirely.

To begin with washing the taste of hours out of my mouth, we'd have to redesign the awful sleeve and Bowie's haircut and flip-flops

i grew to like most of hours recently. idk. it’s certainly not the ideal presentation of that material but some of the songs are good if you stare hard enough through the ozone

Is it love or is it what?
Who's this guy I'm gonna blow away, hey
What kind of love is he giving you?

good christ the first post on this thread is some nonsense

as is the second

I love how Bowie dismisses this record ("I was barely involved, I gave it away") when in contemporaneous interviews like this he's very proud of demoing every track and being involved playing guitar and keyboards with the studio band. See: 4:15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhaRvqI0nHk

Yes, the pathos around the record is that, unlike on Tonight, he was really trying, and crashed so hard. This is the only Bowie record where I enjoy zero songs (except Pin-Ups, which was an obvious throwaway).

I may try the re-recorded album on the Loving the Alien package, though it's hilariously petty how, in 9 hours and 54 minutes of material, they wouldn't find a place for "Too Dizzy". WE REMEMBER

probably said above but this was the first of the 'bowie back to what he does best' press-on-release narratives that were then repeated for almost every single album after

I have a probably unpopular thesis that “Young Americans” is a precedent to the more concerted and effective sell-out that would be “Let’s Dance”

I dunno -- I thought that when I bought Changesbowie a long time ago?

"Young Americans" isn't a sell-out, though, unless I read your claim wrong.

That is kinda my claim… more of an attempt at it than an actual sell-out

lol watching that clip again I see Bowie stressing how the songs are "not too dissimilar" from the demos he recorded himself.

wow ... this album really is an example for me of things that sound very much "of its time" ... I was in my early teens and bought it when it came out on cassette. I had never associated "Too Dizzy" with theme music for tv sitcoms before now. But it totally sounds like 1980s tv sitcom theme music.

As in I just went back and listened to that song because it was mentioned upthread and I had lol forgotten about it

The use of “Time Will Crawl” in Leos Carax’s Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (released as The Lovers on the Bridge in Anglophone countries) never fails to stun me. He also used “Modern Love” to incredible effect in his 1986 film Mauvais Sang

"Time Will Crawl" played loudly and prominently in Luca Guadagnino's excellent Challengers in a party sequence after "Hot in Herre," the most wtf segue in movie history.

I was wondering yesterday if there is a thread of filthy rich out-of-touch late 80s boomer rockers TELLING IT LIKE IT IS about life on the streets (and/or amongst the povvos)

The question was raised by listening to Neil Young's Crime in the City - which is probably not the most egregious example - but the first supporting example I thought of was Day In Day Out... tbh I was probably thinking of the clip more than the lyrics, but the lyrics definitely fit

In Bowie's case: filthy rich out-of-touch late 80s tax exile boomer rockers.

The notorious mean streets of Lausanne...

Or the mean streets of Madrid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYQ0Xd0nybQ