Few major artists faceplanted their debut as hard as David Bowie did. His first album and most of his 1960’s material were soundly rejected on arrival, and generally considered an awkward phase best forgotten. Bowie himself was rather embarrassed by record companies’ rereleases of the … Continue reading There Is a Happy Land
David Bowie’s techno phase. It’s one of my favorite David Bowie phases. That’s my hot take. People didn’t appreciate it at the time, but in hindsight, people still don’t appreciate it. But the world really needed a David Bowie techno album or two. Without that, … Continue reading Telling Lies
I’ve always had a hard time wrapping my head around Scary Monsters. It is, for me, one of David Bowie’s more difficult albums. Which Bowie albums one finds accessible and which ones challenging is highly individualistic – everyone has their own personal ranking. I always … Continue reading Teenage Wildlife
It’s one of the great missed opportunities in pop culture that David Bowie never secured the rights to his half-written musical adaptation of 1984. It’s understandable enough that George Orwell’s family wasn’t excited about having his great work subjected to something undoubtedly very weird. Today … Continue reading Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing(Reprise)
It’s hard to think of David Bowie being underrated anymore, although he was throughout many phases in his career. He mastered the art of dying in style, and with that comes near-sainthood. But despite reaching Bob Marley-like levels of merchandizing saturation, Bowie still remains largely … Continue reading Survive
“I was still going through the thing when I was pretending that I understood Nietzsche…” Even David Bowie doesn’t understand Nietzsche, which is okay, because Friedrich Nietzsche was, in a very real and clinical sense, a crazyperson. Still, it helps to pull up some references … Continue reading The Supermen
The overall mood of pop music in the early 2000’s was one of manic energy. Maybe it had something to do with the economy being robust, or some other, less obvious, cultural factor, but the decade felt like ten years of neon-colored hedonism. (At least … Continue reading Sunday
Not every song rewards deep interpretation, even in David Bowie’s world. The meaning is sometimes self-evident. In this case, it’s the universal truth that liberated women are DTF. Of course, the activists who fought for women’s suffrage didn’t do it so their grandchildren could more … Continue reading Suffragette City
David Bowie died five years ago today. A remarkable swath of notable people also died that year, and some very nasty historical events took place. Nasty events have been taking place ever since, and it feels that the world has come unraveled in the past … Continue reading Sue (or in a Season of Crime)
In honor of the avant-garde achievement of Low, I oughta just write this entirely in random words… Whether it’s a joke, a pretention, or a howl of existential angst is entirely up to your own perception.
Lady Garfunkel's Song of the Day 