Tonight vs Never Let Me Down

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.