David Bowie, 1967
The self-titled debut is all over-produced folk music. Bowie’s voice is alternates between high and nasally, and the lecherous, teeth-sucking persona in “Love You Till Tuesday.” It’s mostly forgettable and somewhat surprising that Bowie ultimately found another record deal afterwards. The most interesting feature of David Bowie is that Bowie demonstrates his keen observational skills on “Uncle Albert” and “Love You Till Tuesday,” however, unlike on later albums where he is capable of convincing a younger generation that he’s their co-conspirator, here he comes off as disdainful, sarcastic, and mean.
Space Oddity, 1969
There is little on Space Oddity that listeners did not first experience on David Bowie, except that it all comes together here perfectly. It’s a pattern that would often repeat itself with Bowie, as if his audiences needed to sit through a practice album before the finished product. Yes, “Space Oddity” was hastily put together, but it seems to prove that sometimes Bowie overthinks what he’s doing. Space Oddity appears much more honest and direct with the caliber of songwriting head and shoulders above his debut.
The Man Who Sold The World, 1970
Before engaging in this process, I was only familiar with the title track, courtesy of Nirvana’s Unplugged. It only took one listen though to realize why this was so. After the thoroughly satisfying folk experience of Space Oddity, someone appears to have given Bowie an electric guitar and a huge bag of blow. “The Man Who Sold The World”, may come off as following in the anti-advertising footsteps of the Rolling Stones’ 1956 hit, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, but the rest of the album is steeped in post-hippie Vietnam Weathemen themes like “Running Gun Blues” and “All the Madmen”, wallowing in heavy distortion and feedback as if for their own sake (I‘m thinking of you, “Black Country Rock”) . Even though it’s a phrase better used to describe Diamond Dogs-era Bowie, my initial thoughts here were “massive cocaine blowout.”
Hunky Dory, 1971
Going into this, Hunky Dory was my favourite Bowie album. Superficially, it’s aimed at the Flower Generation, but Bowie manages to capture them right at a moment of transition, before all their dreams come crashing down. The signifiers of the 1960s are here with “Song for Bob Dylan” and “Andy Warhol”, while the Velvet Underground were the stylistic inspiration for “Queen Bitch”, but it’s “Changes” and “Bewlay Brothers” that capture the prevailing mood
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972
This is the classic Bowie I’m familiar with. The notice on the back of the album reads “To Be Played At Maximum Volume.” The hits are “Starman,” “Ziggy Stardust,” “Suffragette City,” and to a lesser extent “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.” Listening to it this time however, it hit me that the opener “Five Years” serves as a fitting closer to the 1960s as a whole, rampant as it is with a sense of the finality of things and of dreams broken.
