#88 David Bowie, 'Hunky Dory' (1971)
Previously #108
In a sign of things to come, on his fourth album, David Bowie reinvented his down opting to create a record of more piano-driven pop as opposed to the guitar-driven music he was known for. ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ did poorly commercially, and his label, RCA decided not to promote this record much as they were worried that he would change his image and sound again after this. They weren’t wrong about that, but what they were wrong about is that Bowie’s chameleon-like ability is what made him so great. This is definitely the body of work where he starts to sound like David Bowie.
‘Hunky Dory’ opens with ‘Changes,’ which from memory was the first Bowie song that I heard. Funnily enough, I heard it the day I bought my first computer in 1996. It came with Encarta Encyclopaedia, and upon turning the computer on, I inserted the Encarta CD-Rom and searched “Music.” There was a short clip of ‘Changes,’ which was Encarta’s example as to what “music” is. It goes into ‘Oh! You Pretty Things,’ which was the first track written for this eventual release, and references Aleister Crowley and Friedrich Nietzsche. It’s track 4, however, that the music peaks. ‘Life On Mars?,’ one of Bowie’s signature songs, is cinematic and epic. He wrote it as a parody of Frank Sintra’s ‘My Way,’ using the same chord sequence in the opening sequence. Bowie recorded the vocals in one take, astoundingly. ‘Kooks’ was inspired by his new-born son, Duncan Jones. Side two features tributes to two iconic American artists; Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan. Bowie managed to sum up Dylan in just 3 lines; “With a voice like sand and glue/Some words had truthful vengeance/That could pin us to the floor.” ‘Queen Bitch’ is a tribute to the Velvet Underground, a band that inspired Bowie early on in his career. He does his finest Lou Reed impersonation on this song (I really double checked to make sure it wasn’t a cover). This song is the only guitar-driven song on the record. I wonder if this song inspired The Killers’ ‘Mr Brightside.’ The following lyrics and their delivery remind me so much of it; “And I'm phoning a cab/'Cause my stomach feels small/There's a taste in my mouth.” And it's no taste at allThe cover artwork was inspired by Marlene Dietrich and other actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood. So Bowie. Such a great record but the best is yet to come.
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