The Discography of
David Bowie

EARLY CAREER

SPACE ODDITY

NOVEMBER 1969

This album signifies the "true start" of David Bowie's career. This 1969 album was released in the US a "Man of Words/Man of Music", and then reissued worldwide as "Space Oddity" in 1972 with an image of Ziggy Stardust on the cover once that persona was introduced and was so popular. This album is spacey and folksy and a more accurate representation of the music Bowie would produce than his debut album.

TOP TRACK: Space Oddity

HIDDEN GEM: Every other song on the album. Its title track has overshadowed the rest of them

GENRES: Progressive rock, Folk rock, Psychedelic rock, Psychedelic folk

EARLY CAREER

THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD

NOVEMBER 1970

The Man Who Sold The World arrived on store shelves during a bizarre time in Bowie's career. After years of failed efforts, he'd finally scored a hit the previous year with "Space Oddity." His subsequent singles, however, failed to generate any heat, and it seemed like he might be a One Hit Wonder. Always one to know how to get attention, Bowie decided to wear a dress on the cover of his third album, The Man Who Sold The World. "I refuse to be thought of as mediocre," Bowie said. "If I am mediocre, I'll get out of the business. There's enough fog around." This album didn't make as much of a splash as Bowie anticipated, but it was rediscovered by his fans after his Ziggy Stardust persona flung his career off the tracks.

TOP TRACK: The Man Who Sold the World

HIDDEN GEMS: Black Country Rock, After All

GENRES: Rock music, Glam rock, Hard rock, Heavy metal, Folk rock

ZIGGY STARDUST

THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST

JUNE 1972

"The world has just five years left and it seems like there is no hope, but suddenly an alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust enters the body of a man and offers us salvation in our dying days. Sadly, he 'took it all too far' and wound up killing himself in a 'Rock and Roll Suicide.' It's a story that virtually nobody has ever bothered to follow, but that hardly matters. The songs on Ziggy Stardust represent the high point of the entire glam movement. Also, Bowie was reborn onstage as Ziggy Stardust, providing a much-needed rock star in an otherwise bleak music landscape. Even better, parents hated him. Bowie has had bigger hits and more acclaimed albums, but never in his career did he seem quite as important or refreshing. This is the Bowie album that will be in the history books."

TOP TRACKS: Ziggy Stardust, Starman

HIDDEN GEM: Lady Stardust

GENRES: Rock music, Art rock, Glam rock, Proto-punk

ZIGGY STARDUST

ALADDIN SANE

APRIL 1973

"'Aladdin Sane' bridged the gap between 'Ziggy Stardust' and 'Diamond Dogs'. With advanced orders of over 100,000 the album finally clarified Bowie's position as an established rock 'n' roll star. In maintaining his fan base while diverting to more experimental territory Bowie was confident he could hold a crowd and set the trend. Crucially this period saw the beginning of Bowie as pop auteur. Brimming with self-belief after having the audacity to kill off Ziggy, he went on to reinvent himself time and time again, becoming a key innovator and changing the face of the musical and cultural landscape throughout the seventies."

TOP TRACKS: The Jean Genie

HIDDEN GEM: Lady Grinning Soul

GENRES: Rock music, Glam rock, Art rock

ZIGGY STARDUST

DIAMOND DOGS

MAY 1974

"Bowie had been planning to build a full-fledged concept album around George Orwell's dystopian classic, 1984, 10 years before the fateful date. But when the author's estate refused to grant him their blessing, Bowie was forced to scale back on overt references to the novel, and rework the material to mesh with other, unrelated song ideas and make sense of it all, somehow. As a result, Diamond Dogs became a complex affair, both musically and lyrically, which quickly moved on from the apocalyptic prophecies intoned on the introductory mood piece, "Future Legend," into the title track's more familiar arena glam aesthetic (backed by faux concert sounds) and the dramatic cabaret balladry of "Sweet Thing," which was beautifully garnished by Mike Garson's piano."

TOP TRACK: Rebel Rebel

HIDDEN GEM: 1984

GENRES: Rock music, Glam rock

THIN WHITE DUKE

YOUNG AMERICANS

MARCH 1975

"Young Americans represented David Bowie's dive into soul music, particularly Philly Soul. Containing the stunning funk single "Fame," the album felt like a vehicle for Bowie to address one of his favorite topics--pop stardom--from a new angle, at a moment when it seemed likely to destroy him. The soul-inspired album that came out of the Sigma Sound recordings, Young Americans, was yet another new direction for an artist who staked his career on ceaselessly finding new directions. It was also the first time he'd made an album whose chief purpose was pleasure. There's nothing like the apocalyptic visions of Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs on Young Americans; it's as smart as anything he'd recorded before it, but also relaxed and limber-hipped enough for his hardcore fans' less alienated big sisters and little brothers to get into."

TOP TRACKS: Young Americans, Fame

HIDDEN GEM: The rest of the album! If you like Fame and Young Americans, you'll like the rest of the tracklist

GENRES: Rock music, Soul music, Funk, Blue-eyed soul, Philadelphia soul, Funk rock

BERLIN ERA

LOW

JANUARY 1977

"Compared to its predecessors, David Bowie's 11th studio album is noticeably reserved. 'I had no statement to make on Low,' said Bowie, who could hardly write lyrics at all in the aftermath of his L.A. excesses, let alone fashion another extensive character study like Ziggy or the Thin White Duke. His lyrical gifts were already spread thin, and thinner still when a completed third verse was cut from 'Always Crashing in the Same Car,' in which Bowie did his very best Bob Dylan impression. Producer Tony Visconti thought it was so creepy, and potentially inappropriate given Dylan's motorcycle accident a decade earlier, that they scrapped it.
"

TOP TRACK: Be My Wife

HIDDEN GEM: Warszawa

GENRES: Ambient music, Art rock, Experimental rock, Avant-pop

BERLIN ERA

HEROES

OCTOBER 1977

"'Heroes' is the second installment of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. The trilogy, and 'Heroes' in particular, show all the signs of an artist growing up, shaking off the trappings of capitalist ego and success, and searching for a soul instead. It often sounds as if Bowie is conducting chaos, smashing objects together to discover scarily beautiful new shapes. 'Heroes' contains some of Bowie's greatest vocal performances, fearless takes in which he pushes his voice to wrenching emotional states that often teeter on the edge of sanity. There's tension here, too, because while Bowie is clearly putting all of himself into the microphone like never before, he would often have no idea what he was actually going to sing until actually stepping up to record, a technique borrowed from his frequent collaborator at the time, Iggy Pop.
"

TOP TRACK: Heroes (obviously)

HIDDEN GEM: Sons of the Silent Age

GENRES: Rock music, Art rock, Ambient music, Progressive rock, Post-punk, Krautrock, Experimental rock

NEW ROMANTIC ERA

SCARY MONSTERS (AND SUPER CREEPS)

SEPTEMBER 1980

"Many of the songs on 'Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)' were as challenging and unconventional as critics and discerning Bowie-philes could have asked for. The opening tune, 'It's No Game,' married a plodding dirge to Bowie's intentionally strangled vocals and a female narration of the lyrics in Japanese. 'Up the Hill Backwards' commented on the singer's recent divorce over a lurching, 7/4 beat, and then the title track arose from a sinister Robert Fripp guitar figure, which was indicative of its subject's descent into madness--all before the aforementioned singles made their entrances."

TOP TRACK: Ashes to Ashes, Fashion

HIDDEN GEM: Teenage Wildlife

GENRES: Rock music, New wave, Art rock, Post-punk, Experimental rock

NEW ROMANTIC ERA

LET'S DANCE

APRIL 1983

"To say David Bowie's return in 1983 was eagerly awaited would be an understatement. Bowie had been one of pop's dominant figures in the 70s, his astonishing shape-shifting ensuring he remained ahead of the cultural curve. And in the three years since his last album, 1980's 'Scary Monsters', his central place in the pop firmament had been cemented, with post-punks and new romantics citing him as a key influence. Given the stratospheric levels of anticipation, it was perhaps inevitable that many fans found 'Let's Dance' a disappointment. The alien artist formerly known as Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane had assumed no new identity, donned no new mask. His 1983 incarnation was prosaic: a grinning, besuited, bleach-blond rock star. He looked tanned and hetitlehy, years younger than the emaciated, cocaine-addled Thin White Duke. In interviews he joked and appeared relaxed. There was nothing to frighten the horses. Bowie had become accessible."

TOP TRACK: Let's Dance, Modern Love

HIDDEN GEM: Cat People

GENRES: Rock music, Pop music, Pop rock, New wave, Dance-pop, Dance-rock, Post-disco

NEW ROMANTIC ERA

NEVER LET ME DOWN

APRIL 1987

"Never Let Me Down isn't so cut and dried. It's an odd, freewheeling pastiche of elements from all the previous Bowies, an unfocused conglomeration of 'Aladdin Sane''s hard rock, 'Station to Station''s dense sound and 'Let's Dance''s backbeat. It may well be the noisiest, sloppiest Bowie album ever. Being noisy and sloppy isn't necessarily a bad thing--after all, it makes this LP more interesting than 1984's 'Tonight', which was distinguished chiefly by its duliness--but sad to say, 'Never Let Me Down' is also something of a mess."

TOP TRACKS: Day-In Day-Out

GENRES: Rock music, Pop music, Pop rock, Dance music, Blue-eyed soul

ELECTRONIC PERIOD

BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE

APRIL 1993

"'Black Tie White Noise' brings the Thin White Duke back with one of the smartest records of a very smart career. It's also Bowie's blackest sound yet. In the wake of the L.A. riots, amid the triumph of rap and African American film, turning soulward is savvy, and Bowie has always been secure enough to expand his inner vision when the world shifts. His marriage to Iman--supermodel but, even so, a Somali--may also have provided non-Western inspiration. Yet what's remarkable about this new record is how deeply Bowie mines the black mother lode while never conceding his own personality; with no wanna-be sentimentality, he confronts and incorporates the music that remains pop's edgiest source."

TOP TRACKS: Jump They Say

GENRES: Rock music, Soul music, Acid jazz, Art rock

ELECTRONIC PERIOD

EARTHLING

FEBRUARY 1997

"On 'Earthling', Bowie lets the songs tell the story. Gone are the spoken interludes and overblown avant-garde flourishes that marred Outside; instead, the tracks on Earthling are linked only by the power of the turbocharged guitars, the energy and intensity of the skittering drum-and-bass rhythms, the spiritual-technological tug of war in the lyrics and Bowie's signature baritone croon."

TOP TRACKS: I'm Afraid of Americans

GENRES: Rock music, Drum and bass, Jungle music, Techno, Alternative rock, Industrial rock, Electronica

NEOCLASSICIST PERIOD

'HOURS...'

OCTOBER 1999

"Since David Bowie spent the '90s jumping from style to style, it comes as a shock that Hours, his final album of the decade, is a relatively straightforward affair. Not only that, but it feels unlike anything else in his catalog. Bowie's music has always been a product of artifice, intelligence, and synthesis. 'Hours...' is a relaxed, natural departure from this method. Arriving after two labored albums, the shift in tone is quite refreshing. 'Thursday's Child,' the album's engaging mid-tempo opener, is a good indication of what lays ahead. It feels like classic Bowie, yet recalls no specific era of his career. For the first time, Bowie has absorbed all the disparate strands of his music, from 'Hunky Dory' through 'Earthling'. That doesn't mean Hours is on par with his earlier masterworks; it never attempts to be that bold. What it does mean is that it's the first album where he has accepted his past and is willing to use it as a foundation for new music."

TOP TRACKS: Thursday's Child

GENRES: Rock music, Art rock, Hard rock, Alternative rock, Adult contemporary music, Pop rock


NEOCLASSICIST PERIOD

REALITY

SEPTEMBER 2003

"It took David Bowie a mere 15 months to write and record his 23rd album, 2003's Reality. While no one could have guessed it at the time, it'd take him another 10 years to finish his 24th. Reality found Bowie working once again with frequent collaborator Tony Visconti, who co-produced 2002's Heathen, returning to the creative fold for the first time since 1980's Scary Monsters. The platinum-selling Heathen brought Bowie some of his best reviews in years, but rather than trying to duplicate that album's heavily layered approach, the duo opted for a more direct, aggressive sound. 'There's a part of David Bowie that definitely does not want to repeat himself, so we were committed to avoiding the Heathen formula,' Visconti explained to Sound on Sound. 'He wanted to change to something that he and his live band could play onstage with great immediacy, without the need for synthesizer patches and backing tracks. He wanted to make this more of a band album.'"

TOP TRACKS: Bring Me The Disco King

GENRES: Rock music, Rock and roll, Alternative rock

FINAL YEARS

THE NEXT DAY

MARCH 2013

"On several levels, David Bowie's 24th studio album is a cunning act of sleight of hand. From the 'Heroes'-referencing cover on down, he hasn't only come to terms with his past, he's making his old material work for his new material. The 'Heroes'-erasing cover is an admission, a boast, and a provocation ('how dare he!') all at once. And by keeping the album's recording sessions a tight-lipped secret, the back-from-the-dead exclamation of its announcement was that much more pronounced."

TOP TRACKS: The Stars (Are Out Tonight)

GENRES: Art rock