Young Americans

I’m listening to all of David Bowie’s studio albums while we’re all mostly staying inside. My thoughts about David Bowie and Space Oddity are here. The Man Who Sold The World is here. Hunky Dory is here. Ziggy Stardust is here. Aladdin Sane is here. Diamond Dogs is here.

Diamond Dogs is the angriest David Bowie album so far. Every dystopia Bowie sang about culminates with that album.

Every Bowie album so far has been slight shifts, but familiar. You know what you’re getting with Bowie’s first few albums — guitars, sometimes louder and sometimes quieter, singing about fame and glam dystopia. Maybe a piano and saxophone mixed in, maybe different rhythms. But there’s not a completely drastic sonic shift between records.

Young Americans is different. It’s startling from the first notes of the first track. David Bowie decided to change for real this time. He decided to make an R&B record, which also has a bad cover of “Across The Universe” for some reason (a bold decision in its own right, I guess). “Young Americans”, “Win”, and “Fascination” are as great of a first three tracks to an album as any I’ve heard. The bassline for “Fascination” grabs your attention and never lets it go.

But the record runs out of steam after those songs. Sometimes experiments work (like the start of the album), sometimes they’re well-meaning but awkward (“Somebody Up There Likes Me”, “Fame”) and sometimes you wonder what the hell the author was thinking (like the cover of “Across The Universe” that allegedly is four and a half minutes long but feels like an eternity).

But to have an album that isn’t just a re-packaging of loud guitars with different makeup is good in itself. Even the songs that come out of it that don’t quite work have compelling individual elements. It may have been easier to go back to the glam rock well and ride out a successful but artistically unfulfilling career. But I’m gathering Bowie doesn’t do comfortable very well.

Next up, Station to Station.