Is THE LODGER David Bowie's best record?

also it has a lot of bowie's FUNNIEST writing: he's a fairly humourless sentimentalist usually

george's idea that it's an 80s blueprint is interesting: i don't specially hear that — i think it's a real anomaly record, across the board, not glossy, not BIG, not painterly, not conceptual, not quilt-poppy even — but if GG's right i'd still take that as a plus rather than a minus, since i don't at all buy george's general line on "pop" anyway, esp.80s pop

"adult"? i have no idea what this means in this context

specifics could convince me otherwise perhaps: vague sociological generalisations will (as usual) affirm my prejudices

... except it's savage lure, not savage jaw. (my favourite misheard lyrcs are from Lodger: "Don't say nothing's wrong, 'cause I've got a love of cheese, a beard"

I don't know if Lodger's my favourite Bowie album, probably not, but I do think it's brilliant and it's the last truly great Bowie album (Scary Monsters has some great songs but it's a mixed bag and marks the end of Bowie trying to do off-the-wall innovative things). There's something not quite right about Lodger, the song sequencing is off-kilter, the songs don't quite hang together, but this jarring effect makes it more not less interesting an album. It's the prototypical late seventies art album of modernist alienation; I like the fact that it's jokey and yet serious at the same time. I mean, the lyrics to Fantastic Voyage or Move On (Africa is sleepy people, Russia has its horsemen...), they're sort of ironically childlike, but in the end you find yourself moved anyway. I read somewhere that the cover was a take on a Picabia portrait, is this true?

http://www.abcgallery.com/P/picabia/picabia18.html
the Cyclope

"so the glass trilogy, the pyramid on the cover in the classical section we'll never see"?

what?

Of course, the good easily outweighs the bad on this album. I particularly love the mad violins on "Boys Keep Swinging".

HAHHAHHAHAAHAHA

(tho i think glass when he started might have tried something this quick)

THE HINTERLAND
THE HINTERLAND

I'M GONNA SAIL TO THE HINTERLAND

it's fa-fa fa-fa-fa
fa-fa-far away
it's a fa-fa fa-fa-fa fa-da da-da-da

que Awesome Guitar Solo

I was reading my comments from '05 above. I think maybe I've been a little wrong about Bowie, and perhaps what made me rethink was Seu Jorge doing early Bowie in Life Aquatic. I probably need a legion of leggy unpaid interns to really sort it out, but I have more of a jones these days for the Bowie just pre-Iggy and the Stardust Cowboy or whatever that one was. OK, I know it, and parts of that record are so great, actually, and it was the one that tipped him off into that dress-up phase he needed to really make it. Still think that record is sort of bad in the manner of those Kinks records from the same era, those rock operettas. Still like some of the riffs on the Kinks stuff and Bowie, though, so mixed feelings, because it's stupid to hate the '70s for its excesses. So these days really like Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory. I mean I'd never really listened to any of those all the way through, I was way more into Eno and Roxy because I deemed them less excessive. But I still love Lodger, whose overall tone seems unique.

God Yassassin is good.

One of these days, one of these days, gotta get a word through one of these days

Gotta get a word to Elizabeth's father.

Also amazing and very unique.

Hey ho wish me well

I always hated Seu Jorge with a passion btw.

Really? He seems like the epitome of inoffensive to me. Maybe that's why.

It was just irritating how anyone was paying attention to something so mediocre and unremarkable for an entire year.

I can't believe how much "African Night Flight" sounds like a Bone Thugs-N-Harmony song.

My stepfather looks just like David Bowie
But he hates David Bowie
I think Bowie's cool
I think Lodger rules
And my stepdad's a fool!

I think "Lodger" starts out much stronger than it ends. But yeah the first dozen or so tracks are unstoppable.

There's only ten songs!

The last two tracks aren't that great, but the rest is fantastic.

LOL heh you're right! only ten songs!

Sister Midnight is just soooo badass, it's hard to hear "Red Money" and not think of it....

This is an awesome beast of a record.

Whether it's the best of the trilogy, I'm not sure -- but for whatever reason, it's the one I've listened to the most. By far.