Tonight vs Never Let Me Down

"Jump They Say" is beautiful ya

As I said in the RIP thread, having just heard both for the first time, Never Let Me Down is the better album overall (although the back half is pretty weak, and I still wouldn't say it's necessarily a good album). The two good songs on Tonight ('Loving The Alien' and 'Blue Jean') don't make up for how appalling the rest is. I mean, it's really bad, but it also features the desecration of several good Iggy Pop songs and 'God Only Knows'. There's just no excuse for it.

Good for Iggy if he made a lot of money off of Tonight but the ends really don't justify the means at all.

I've never yet listened to either album as a complete entity, but let me just correct a few of these received wisdoms:

- the first Tin Machine record is absolutely great
(have never listened to the second one, but LOVE 'You Belong in Rock'n'Roll')
- Black Tie White Noise is an equally superb record, and as a stylistic mélange it beats Earthling in my book
- 'Never Let Me Down' the title track is gorgeous and one of his best singles - ditto 'Loving the Alien'.

my favourite Bowie album is Outside. yet I also love the funky Bowie of the mid-70s and the big singles of the '80s.

let me just say I suspect there's some creepy racism/classism going on involved in these repeated hates about the 'black' Bowie eras - not necessarily on this board, but in general. it's easy for most to consider the Berlin era cool, therefore equally easy to underestimate the feel-good factor of the eras either side of that one. Eno is God and Euro tenseness is good, while Nile Rodgers is a cash grab guy and L.A. is nothing else than expensive junkie central. or so it seems to me.

I dont think anyone is saying that about Nile Rodgers tho. Bowie wanted big hits and Rodgers was the best producer to seek out for that.

lol the bonus tracks on the virgin reissue of tonight completely outclass the album

10. "This Is Not America"
11. "As the World Falls Down"
12. "Absolute Beginners"

anyway a non-"loving the alien"/"blue jean" song i enjoy on tonight is "tumble and twirl"

as i think i implied on the rip thread in between these two messes you have two incredible soundtrack one-offs ("absolute beginners" and "when the wind blows") and the labyrinth songs ("underground," "as the world falls down," and especially "within you" are among his best songs imo) that kind of sketch out an idea of a great mid-'80s bowie

The Wikipedia entry on Tonight has lots of track-by-track Bowie quotes on why things didn't quite work. The one for 'Dancing with the Big Boys" suggests that he may have then achieved with "Absolute Beginners" what he had set out to do with that song:

"Dancing with the Big Boys", which Bowie also co-wrote with Pop, was written and recorded in eight hours as they egged each other on. In what was described as an "exhilarating rush," Bowie and Pop "went in [to the studio] with a few bottles of beer and would virtually bellow out anything that came into their heads," said Padgham. "And I just recorded it all." The song is about the "little guy" being crushed by "oppressive corporate structures." The lyrics were taken from a backlog of unused lyrics; the line "this dot marks your location" was a reference to a "lengthy irritating stay" at a New York Hotel (Bowie had been looking at the hotel room's fire escape map), and "Your family is a football team" was a reference to the immigrant families working in New York; "the whole family [has to work together for survival." The track elicited this from Bowie:

There's a particular sound I'm after that I haven't really got yet; I'll either crack it on the next album or retire from it. I think I got quite close to it on "Dancing with the Big Boys." ... I got very musical over the last couple of years - trying to write musically and develop things the way people used to write in the Fifties. I stayed away from experimentation. Now, I think I should be a bit more adventurous. And in "Big Boys," Iggy and I broke away from all that for one track, and it came nearer to the sound I was looking for than anything else.

Listening to the album again this morning, the scale of "God Only Knows" is striking: it's like, oh shit, that's a string section; wait, this is an orchestra! This was just a few years after "Sea of Love" was a hit with a similar arrangement, though.

anyway i generally agree with the idea that never let me down is better bc at least bowie sounds engaged, even though it produces something mostly ridiculous. i sorta love "zeroes"

of course it's the only bowie album that he deleted a song from on subsequent reissues bc he hated it so much ("too dizzy," which i've never heard)

"Too Dizzy" is the catchiest, most succinct tune on Side 2 and I've no idea why he deleted it unless he thought "Bang Bang" and "New York's in Love," in which case he was a worse coke addict than I thought. Although not great, "Too Dizzy" is fascinating for hearing Bowie sing "Who's this guy I'm gonna blow away?" over a "Freeway of Love" sax.

* unless he thought "Bang Bang" and "New York's in Love" were superior

huh yeah i just listened to it and it's way better than the songs surrounding it. sounds like a labyrinth castoff

he didn't delete "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)," the worst he ever wrote and sung?

for the uninitiated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkGLwQ76E5o

Never Let Me Down by a considerable margin over Tonight.

Tonight loses point for overdoing the "Let's cover more old Iggy songs" thing and making them boring (though I do like "Neighborhood Threat"). Other than "Loving the Alien," side 1 is limp. Most of the time, I think "Tumble and Twirl" is the best song here.

The best part of Never Let Me Down is the 4 songs from "Time Will Crawl" to "Zeroes." The title track is a light, floating beauty that suffers a bit from a meager chorus that isn't up to the quality of the verses. "Zeroes" is a nice big dumb rock song bridging into the long, sumptuous sitar and phasing "Doesn't matter" mantra fade.

And god help me, but up there in the pantheon of really stupid songs that I love unreservedly (Emotional Rescue, Kung Fu Fighting), I adore "Shining Star."

Peter met Frank
Formed a dummy run gang
Worked heist or hit for 10 g's flat
Blew heads out of shape for the name of Trotsky, Sinn-Fein, Hitler cashdown
No hope heroes cover the page
With debts in hell
And fingers in blood
Poor little bodies all covered in scabs
Threw it all away
Another life in the grave

See, it's so catchy!

To contradict reports that NLMD was a slapdash, distracted affair here's a 1987 interview in which he mentions self-recorded demos (unheard of since the early '70s):

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

As with Let's Dance, Bowie prepared for the album by recording some demos before hand, this time showing up with 8 of the 9 songs that would appear on the album. This surprised collaborator Carlos Alomar, who said "it was the first time in the eleven years that I've been with the damn man that he's brought in anything."[5]

lol in that interview he starts the process of disentangling himself from Nile Rodgers' production in Let's Dance; NLMD is closer to his roots, he sez.

xp talking about tonight there.

Summer '87:

MUSICIAN: Your previous album, Tonight, seemed like it was rushed out to capitalize on the success of Let's Dance.

BOWIE: It was rushed The process wasn't rushed; we actually took our time recording the thing; Let's Dance was done in three weeks, Tonight took five weeks or something, which for me is a really long time. I like to work fast in the studio. There wasn't much of my writing on it `cause I can't write on tour and I hadn't assembled anything to put out. But I thought it kind of a violent effort at a kind of Pin-Ups [laughs]. It didn't have any concept behind it, it was just a collection of songs. But having played it recently, it sounds much better now than when I did it; some of the stuff I like quite a lot. Things like "Don't look Down" I think are great now; I'm gonna be doing that on the tour. "Alien" sounds great.

MUSICIAN: Were you happy with the album at the time?

BOWIE: No. I sort of sounded jumbled; it didn't hold together well at all. I think that's because there was no real idea why I was in the studio. "Yeah, I better put something together", and I put some good songs together and we did them well, but it didn't gel at all. It was a terrible feeling-though if you take a song out of context and play it, it sounds pretty good. But if you play it as an album it doesn't work, and that was unfortunate. It stopped me from rushing out with another one, `cause I could see the disjointedness in it, and I wanted not to put something out till I was completely satisfied.

BOWIE: The nucleus of the album is a Turkish guy I've been working with quite a long time now called Erdal Kizilcay. He's written a few things with me. He wrote the Tina Turner track "Girls"; another on for a British movie called When The Wind Blows. He went to the equivalent of Julliard in Turkey, where they require them to play adequately every instrument in the orchestra. He can switch from violin to trumpet to French horn, vibes, percussion, whatever. His knowledge of rock music begins and stops with the Beatles [laughs]. His background is really jazz. He moved to Switzerland to play with a pickup band there, and try to carve a niche for himself. I met him in a club. I heard him playing and was amazed; he kept switching instruments all night long [laughs] and he was great on everything he touched! So I asked him if he wanted to start working with me. Carlos Alomar, of course, is on rhythm guitar, Peter Frampton on lead guitar-he's playing really good.

MUSICIAN: Have you and Peter always kept in touch?

BOWIE: There were long periods where we didn't acknowledge each other, `cause we're in different spheres of the world, but every five years we'd make contact. The last time I saw him was when I was doing The Elephant Man and he was living in New York. I always thought it'd be good to work with him-`cause I was so impressed with him as a guitarist at school! I thought it might be a nice way to start working with a lead guitarist; I couldn't think of anybody else off the top of my head that I wanted to work with that I also liked as a person.

MUSICIAN: What do you play on this album?

BOWIE: I do a lot of keyboard things, like synthesizer parts, some rhythm guitar and I play lead on a couple of tracks: "New York's In Love" and "'87 And Cry".

MUSICIAN: On those songs you wanted to have a go at it yourself?

BOWIE: I'd done it on the demo. Peter laid down a couple of solos in the middle, and it wasn't quite what I wanted. So I thought, maybe I should put down what I did and see if it works the way it did in the demo. No disregard for Peter's playing; it just wasn't the kind of guitar I wanted. Peter's too controlled. Mine is a lot of effects and ambiance, just trying to get an atmosphere rather than play. I don't know about "playing".

yeah that bowie was really trying was one of the more alarming things i read on bowiesongs. that was the last time i can recall bowie as a contemporary pop star instead of as this legend trying something newish so let's check in and see if he's recaptured some of that old magic. i'm very fond of 'never let me down', it's always sounded to me like a john lennon track is lennon had lived til 87. everything else i can recall from it i remember as being bad in a dull way, the trenchant social commentary having an on the nose quality that bowie's trenchant social commentary circa diamond dogs or young americans decidedly didn't. most of tonight is horrifying as well (love the big singles even if 'loving the alien' never quite nails the landing and 'blue jean' is blatant 'let's dance again'), but in a more entertaining way, i can point at 'god only knows' or esp his just insanely ill conceived 'tonight' cover (and i say that as someone who loves bowie's 'china girl') and scream 'what are thooose?' better album cover, videos, and hair also.

He and "Day-In Day-Out" were nominated for Best Male Video at the MTV awards.

Never Let Me Down, definitely.

Title track, Time Will Crawl and Zeroes def the tops there. Lots of moments though. Day-In Day-Out didn't really have that much of a tune, did it? More of a stance in the shape of a song. Maybe I like the album as much as I do (B- probably) because it was one of the first cds I bought and would just listen to the 5 or 6 discs that I had all the time, so... familiarity!

Funny to recall that the NLMD press angle at the time was totally about him being re-engaged and experimenting more. Adding a bit of tough back to his music. Rocking. Whereas now, it's certainly seen as lacking all the things it promised.

Tonight was the first album I ever remember being super disappointed by. Seven & the Ragged Tiger got me used to the idea that artists' albums didn't necessarily just get better and better automatically (an eye opener!), but... yikes. 13 years old... walking two miles in the pouring rain to our awful ghetto mall on the day of release. Walked back home in the rain, went up to my room and popped the tape in my boombox... Blue Jean and Loving the Alien = quite good, but WHOA little me couldn't take the rest. Sounded super dreary.

Should I give Tonight another listen or are my memories correct?

They are correct. Buy a 7" of 'Blue Jean' and listen to the gorgeous live version of 'Loving The Alien' Alfred posted on the RIP thread and you're set.

Investigating again.

Could be that the track order doesn't help. The fine, but definitely a bit sleepy, "Loving the Alien" followed by a relaxed "Don't Look Down", the stillborn "God Only Knows" cover, then "Tonight" which sure as hell didn't feel like a second single to me. Bowie's most MOR album side?

For all its faults, at least the second side has a little zip to it.

The tale of two Bowies relates to these two albums:

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

I...don't ever wanna hear Bowie sing reggae

A case made for NLMD as one of the 'worst albums ever': http://theworstalbumsever.tumblr.com/post/44737382929/david-bowie-never-let-me-down-released-april-20

let me just say I suspect there's some creepy racism/classism going on involved in these repeated hates about the 'black' Bowie eras - not necessarily on this board, but in general. it's easy for most to consider the Berlin era cool, therefore equally easy to underestimate the feel-good factor of the eras either side of that one. Eno is God and Euro tenseness is good, while Nile Rodgers is a cash grab guy and L.A. is nothing else than expensive junkie central. or so it seems to me.

For the record, Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray are on all of the Berlin albums. Alomar co-wrote 3 songs on those albums, Davis and Murray co-wrote another.

I think NLMD wins this by having 4 good songs on it vs Tonight only having 2 (if you go by the original track listing and don't count reissue bonus tracks, which are obv all great). NLM, Day in Day Out, Time Will Crawl, and Zeroes are all great - to -good. Tonight has Alien and blue Jean and the rest I can't even listen to.

oh, his cover of bang bang is alright too.

also, even though people thought it was goofy as fuck, I think the Glass Spider Tour as documented on the video was pretty good; the dancers and staging were at least interesting, and note Gaga and everyone else do stuff like this all the time now. Another note on this: my mother really, really wanted to go see this (we'd just moved back to california) and said so multiple times, and hoped that my dad was going to buy tickets for it as it was on her 40th birthday. But he didn't, and that effectively ruined their marriage (they stayed married but it drove a wedge).

I feel like people no longer dismiss Let's Dance; that seemed to be in fashion for a while, maybe around the first big reissue campaign, where everyone thought of the jump to EMI as a big pop sell out move, but in my experience that feeling didn't seem to last among people, or maybe was never really believed by most fans.

it's not a sellout, it's just not a great album

It's not a bad album at all by general standards, but as the first album after Bowie's white hot streak, it's relatively lackluster.

(What was he doing in that three-year gap besides 'Under Pressure'?)

Acting, eating pizza.

waiting out his contract.

Eight shows a week on Broadway.

Hanging out with Duncan.

1981 would be a deliberately lost year.

I vote for 'Loving the Alien.'

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

no fucking way

Maybe it's just that more people have heard Tonight--that album reached #11, NLMD didn't even make the Top 40.

#34 in the States but yeah. Also, affection for "Blue Jean" and "Loving the Alien."

NLMD is not a good album, but Tonight is by most measures a terrible album. Indefensible beyond 'Alien' and 'Blue Jean' (and the former based more on the potential of a well-written song than the final result on the album).

outside of "day in day out" i basically love the first side of never let me down. i also like "glass spider" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i like day in day out too. the first side of the album is really good! it's the second side that blows. I like the live version of Glass Spider that was in the TV special fine but the album version kind of sucked.

Surprised this lost to Tonight which is largely boring a dumb outside of Blue Jean and Loving the Alien.

'Tonight' without 'Blue Jean' is the worst album of the two. But 'Tonight' has 'Blue Jean' on it, so...

― bored at work (snoball), Saturday, 16 January 2016 13:11 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty otm. NLMD is better overall I think. I'd take both over Black Tie White Noise.

although BTWN has Jump They Say on it... hmm

no BTWN is pretty good through and through. only duff track is the title track to me.

BTWN is basically "this is what 92/93 sounds like!" in the same way that 'Earthling' is "hey it's 1997!". As long as I listen to it in that state of mind it's OK. I'll only skip the fuck-awful cover of 'I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday', so on the basis of truly duff tracks BTWN does better than 'Tonight' or NLMD.

Outside of "day in day out" i basically love the first side of never let me down

I don't love it, but it's good. "Beat of Your Drum" is a catchy boneheaded Springsteen/Mellencampm mishmash. Crazy chord sequence too.

Interesting comparing this album's release and promo schedule with Bryan Ferry's for Bete Noire a few months later. It looks like their respective labels put out all the stops for them, treating them as contemporary pop stars instead of aging dudes approaching forty.