Lodger vs. Scary Monsters

"It's No Game (pt. 1)" is one of my favourite Bowie songs and the best "unhinged" vocal performance I can call to mind

I remember having a conversation with a Bowie fan who was old enough to experience every album as they were released, and he described the disappointment felt in the Bowie fan community with the arrival of "Let's Dance" as being seismic, and that the subsequent revisionism of that album as being "good" was frustrating. I never really got it until "Modern Love" came on in the coffee shop yesterday morning when I was feeling annoyed and I listened and thought "he's right this is really disappointing"

"there's no sign of life, it's just the power to charm" indeed.

i love the song "modern love" but i have no great affection for the rest of that album.

The video is soulless and plastic, particularly the bit where hundreds of crescent moon balloons come out of the giant crescent moon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HivQqTtiHVw
(from the 1996 ALan Yentob interview)

I remember having a conversation with a Bowie fan who was old enough to experience every album as they were released, and he described the disappointment felt in the Bowie fan community with the arrival of "Let's Dance" as being seismic, and that the subsequent revisionism of that album as being "good" was frustrating.

Huh. I've had similar conversations with the same generation, and they felt no ill will toward Bowie: they thought Let's Dance was a move as unpredicted as Young Americans and, remembering their experience with that album, held their fire. And everyone loved "Modern Love."

It was Tonight that made these people say, "Thanks, mate, for the memories."

I’ve heard both sides, almost word for word: that Let’s Dance was a shocking betrayal; and that it was OK but really only good for the singles

i have a vague memory of reading (trigger warning) Momus describe Scary Monsters as seeming "anti-modernist" at the time

Huh. I've had similar conversations with the same generation, and they felt no ill will toward Bowie: they thought Let's Dance was a move as unpredicted as Young Americans and, remembering their experience with that album, held their fire. And everyone loved "Modern Love."

It was Tonight that made these people say, "Thanks, mate, for the memories."

― I like queer. You like queer, senator? (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, November 25, 2018 6:41 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, this sounds about right to me.

I don't know, the blonde hair, the pastel suits, I think quite a few long time Bowie fans were cringing at all that. Plus substandard music.

As a great man once said though, time flexes like a whore, falls wanking to the floor, and you can’t expect any artist to keep up the same level forever.

Nothing substandard at all about the title track, 'Modern Love', 'China Girl' etc. His image on that album was very much of its time. You can understand - in hindsight - why he did it... he was trying to wrong-foot everyone who he felt had pinched his act.

I feel that album represents a drop though. It’s not as interesting as its predecessors.

Few songs sounded like "Modern Love" in 1983 even in this year of peak New Wave MTV crossover

Perhaps not a dip in quality but a huge change in thesis. It feels (songwriting-wise) like cynical pop pastiche-- the "cynicism" being the overly trite lyrical approach rather than, say, the intentional cynicism of genre-precedent-to-"Let's Dance" songs like "Fame" and "Young Americans"

His image on that album was very much of its time

Exactly.

Plus his version of "China Girl" blows.

Fgti otm. The album is a return to the kind of warholoan “pastiche” that he had left behind starting with Low.

To be clear, I'm not defending the album besides "Modern Love," "Criminal World," and listening to Chic shimmy in "Without You."

I will also step up for "Cat People"

LD came out my senior year of high school and was considered at least OK even among the fanatics I knew, as Alfred notes Tonight was the dealbreaker in my scene for sure

I remember having a conversation with a Bowie fan who was old enough to experience every album as they were released, and he described the disappointment felt in the Bowie fan community with the arrival of "Let's Dance" as being seismic, and that the subsequent revisionism of that album as being "good" was frustrating. I never really got it until "Modern Love" came on in the coffee shop yesterday morning when I was feeling annoyed and I listened and thought "he's right this is really disappointing"

this was me and my friends except Let's Dance was the FIRST Bowie album to come out since we'd all become fanatics. We were incredibly excited, and utterly disappointed. All but two of us skipped the tour - who wants to hear that stuff? We liked "Modern Love" OK but it was a giant, giant letdown.

The Hunger was released the same year as Let's Dance, right? Like, that movie has got (soon to be defunct) Bowie fanatics Bauhaus playing 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' at the very beginning... also, didn't he do 'Under Pressure' with Queen in between Scary Monsters and Let's Dance? The lyric to that was apparently written almost completely by Bowie.

the classic karaoke conundrum: what to do during the intro:

Mmm num ba de
Dum bum ba be
Doo buh dum ba beh beh

then you think you're in the clear. then twenty seconds pass, and fucking

Um ba ba be
Um ba ba be
De day da
Ee day da- that's okay

on the other hand, one time i saw someone NAIL all of those little lyrical burps and it was transcendent

that's why I always pick the Bowie part. Friends go for the flamboyant Mercury part while I hang back and go "oooh ooh oooh ooooooh"

If you glue the two LPs together so that you have side two of Lodger followed by side one of Scary Monsters you get Bowie's second-best album. In my opinion. Don't do this with actual records.

Under Pressure has the unique distinction of being both featured act’s worst hit single— I prefer friggin Dancing In The Street, Blue Jean, even Thursday’s Child if we’re getting down to it

I was sure that I liked the re-recording of Look Back In Anger but I’m surely ambivalent about it now. The drums on the original are... amazing

fuckin’ dennis davis

ok you goon tie although I don't agree, I can see how you might hate "under pressure" and I can accept an argument that "blue jean" is better but preferring "dancing in the street" cmon now that thing is a catastrophe

I prefer an innocuous catastrophe like "Dancing..." over a song that is so lazy-in-execution and trite-about-a-social-issue and inexplicably refuses to exit the popular canon or my ambient listening experience. I once thought that if music obeys some karmic laws, then I should be grateful for a turd like "Under Pressure" because it allowed an perfect song like "Gypsy Woman" to exist

an innocuous catastrophe!

"Dancing in the Streets" was more of an outrage than a catastrophe though. I like "Under Pressure" btw.

"Dancing" is aggressively embarrassing!

i don't care if everyone's seen it, it was all worth it because of the version of the video that takes out the music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHkhIjG0DKc

Under Pressure has the unique distinction of being both featured act’s worst hit single— I prefer friggin Dancing In The Street, Blue Jean, even Thursday’s Child if we’re getting down to it

I couldn't disagree more with this!

Well, honestly, a large contributor to my allergy to that song is that it seems that the rest of the world disagrees with me and will continue to celebrate it, I'm pretty sure I'll be having my guts eaten by crows in Hell to the sounds of "prshr ON! PEEP! ULL! ppl ON! STREETS!"

Apparently Mercury and Bowie argued like mad while mixing that track.

I keep saying this every time the video for 'Dancing...' gets posted, but it's glorious, Bowie and Jagger trying to out-do each other in every frame.

I wonder what Keef thought of it (not a lot, I'd be willing to bet)

I imagine he thought quite a bit of it, actually. `Course it was all negative. But, y'know, no good deed, etc. etc. . . .

Well, yeah... that's pretty much what I was saying!

I know there was some tension in the Stones camp regarding Jagger getting a solo deal to begin with (Keef says as much in his book), but I can just picture Keef watching the 'Dancing in the Street' video all like "christ, look at this pair of twats" ...

Wasn’t Let’s Dance his first album for EMI? Didn’t the label do that extravagant “Let’s rent a mansion and invite the media over for a decadent press conference” thing? I decidedly feel like part of that record’s aesthetic was forged in “I need to justify this giant wad I just banked.”

I still find it funny that albums like Station to Station and Low (indeed all of his classic albums, for that matter) were issued on RCA, which never struck me as being a particularly "cool" record label. Although this might have something to do with the fact I first saw those orange labels on older relatives Paul Anka/Jim Reeves LP's etc.

Yes they were a pretty square label, they had Nilsson, Mike Nesmith, er... Lou Reed!

Oh yeah, Metal Machine Music was on RCA too! Feels like the kind of thing that would have been more at home on Virgin Records or something.

Well Lou claimed he wanted Red Seal, RCA's classic division to put it out and I hope the story is true cuz the idea of the insectoid drug-bug era Lou playing a rough of "MMM" for some suited square trying to convince him it was "modern composition" is too good

Lodger is the correct answer.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Teenage Wildlife wot swung it