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Creature posted:It's interesting that quite a few brilliant artists/bands from the 1960s and 70s hit their creative lows during the 80s. Was it due to the fact that so many of them had been going for 10/15/20 years by that point, and it was simply inevitable that they'd run out of steam eventually? Or was it something about that time period itself? On a Blackstar note, can anyone parse the lyrics of Girl Loves Me? It's a great song but drat if I can make sense of the words he uses. Is that the point and it's somewhat of a Jabberwocky type thing? Or is it some kind of thick slang?
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Jan 16, 2016 02:12
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| # ¿ Nov 9, 2025 13:35 |
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Gnossiennes posted:Genius's annotations for Girl Loves Me are good, but I don't know rhyming slang or the stuff from clockwork orange, so I'm trusting it to be correct  Good god, he basically invented a language for that song. It's a hybrid of Burgess and Orwell references, Polari, Filipino and Russian slang, and bits of the stuff he made up for Outside's characters. One of the things that really bummed me out was hearing that he and Brian Eno were finally talking about returning to Outside and potentially working on a followup. I'd been wanting that forever. Maybe Eno could still do something with it, but it wouldn't feel right without Bowie.
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Jan 16, 2016 09:30
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Listening to his self-titled debut is kind of adorable now. He's singing simple generic 60s British pop tunes about tea and crumpets and it's like "Oh honey, you have no idea what's coming."
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Jan 16, 2016 20:15
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screaden posted:Best way is to buy a greatest hits compilation like "Nothing has changed" which covers all the way up to The Next Day (and technically Blackstar I guess). Make a note of the songs you really liked and then explore the albums they're from. For a complete first-timer I'd go a little more concise and start with Changesbowie, then expand chronologically from there.
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Jan 17, 2016 07:52
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davebo posted:Was watching SNL earlier and Fred Armisen had a segment just to say how much Bowie's appearance in 1979 meant to him and they showed a short clip. He said go to the website to see "all David Bowie's SNL performances" so I was hoping that would include the Tin Machine ones from '91 but sadly no. Anyway here's a link to the 3 songs he did play: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/david-bowie For some reason I very clearly remember that Macaulay Culkin hosted that episode. Marv Hushman posted:John, I'm Only Dancing v72, 73, or 79? Agreed on this version. The walking bassline is excellent.
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Jan 19, 2016 03:22
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MinibarMatchman posted:Bowie's dismissal of Numan is pretty unfortunate, and almost ironic given that they both went to a Reznor-level music--Outside was Bowie's foray into that stuff, while Numan eventually turned into an industrial/darkwave artist completely. Funny how in 1984, Bowie was getting into more jangly stuff while Numan had just made Berserker, IMO one of his best records and more along the lines of what a funkier, robotic Let's Dance sound could have been. I agree though, it's interesting that Bowie and Numan both took on weird spacey synth rock in the late 70s, commercialized radio pop/jazz-funk fusion in the 80s, then took interpretations on NIN in the mid 90s, Trent Reznor being mutual fans with both of them. But while Bowie's career veered back toward contemporary rock and avant-garde jazz experimentation afterward, Numan never looked back. His last couple albums were great goth/industrial-rock/darkwave pieces, and Hybrid is a fantastic concept.
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Feb 10, 2016 11:23
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Cheena means girl/woman in Nadsat. But a lot of the words in the song are Polari, 60s UK gay subculture slang. The lyrics are loving crazy and I love it. It's got to be one of his most deliberately obscure songs. From what I gather by reading various interpretations it's essentially a warped interpretation of A Clockwork Orange, about a group of punk kids doing drugs, getting girls, and evading police, with one standout character lamenting he has his heart set on someone but knows she's trouble and can't get mixed up with her. Then the repeated "where the gently caress did Monday go" along with the days of the week is either him getting hosed up all week so Monday isn't even on his mind anymore, or that Monday used to be a good day for his activities but now hasn't been since his love interest came along (I'm cold to this pig and pug show).
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Feb 23, 2016 10:44
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| # ¿ Nov 9, 2025 13:35 |
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Astrochicken posted:Try 1. Outside. It's like Blackstar's older, weirder cousin. Outside is my overall favorite Bowie album from front to back. There are many tracks through his catalog that I absolutely love more individually, but very few albums have such a full volume of great songs. Admittedly I usually skip the segue tracks due to having heard the story dozens of times (except I Am With Name since it contains a song), but it tries so many things and succeeds at most of them while being something completely new - who else fuses avant-garde jazz with industrial rock? I've been listening to it a lot lately and although my tastes have shifted over the years, I consider The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (As Beauty) the best track on there. It's every sound he's going for on that album contained in one song.
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Feb 28, 2016 21:20
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