Music of the Moment: David Bowie - Earthling
Christmas comes just once a year, but the gift from TheWifeToWhomI’mMarried keeps giving all year!
She got me the David Bowie Box, a 10-CD set that re-issued the last five Bowie records. Each album is accompanied by a disc of remixes, b-sides, and other rarities.
I’m listening to Earthling this morning. I remember buying this album for the first time in 1997. I was an assistant manager at a music store in Colorado. 1997 was the year of Prodigy. It was the year America was supposed to embrace electronic and dance music. Bowie never being afraid of trends, whether setting or following them, jumped in feet first with his foray into the electronic world, and Earthling was it.
The first David Bowie record I ever purchased was Outside. Where 99% of Bowie fans grew up on albums like Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory, my exposure to Bowie came with these ’90s records. It’s always bummed me out that so many people malign this phase of Bowie’s career. Sure, Outside is too long and Earthling can be a bit of a one-trick pony, but the music from Outside through Reality has been on the whole quite brilliant.
Anyway, back to Colorado, Earthling came out in 1997; January, if memory serves. I’d read about it and I guess I fell for some of the marketing. I wasn’t sure I loved electronic music, but I was really getting into Beck’s Odelay. I was also pretty sure I liked Bowie, having found some songs on Outside I really liked and having bought a compilation of his older stuff. With that, I took the plunge and bought our only copy of Earthling when it arrived at our store.
Luscious Jackson, Earthling, and Sublime’s self-titled album will always have a Colorado connection in my mind. It was tough to listen to those records for awhile after I returned to Alabama, but I’m now past that. Why let a bad relationship ruin good music? It makes no sense to me! Earthling is good music. Don’t let tepid reviews from the “I remember when” crowd ruin this for you. Don’t let techno purists tell you what’s wrong with it. Buy the album and just listen to it. You won’t be disappointed.
Filed under: Tags: David Bowie
Glad to see some love for this one, Josh. I really like Earthling a lot. It’s a snapshot of the time, like many of Bowie’s albums. He’s always been one to pick up on the current style and take it somewhere new, but here he seemed to kind of just ride it. At the time, it was really slammed for that - not being a groundbreaking twist on drum-n-bass. But looking back on it 10 years later, its need to be groundbreaking has passed and now it can simply exist as music of the past. And it holds up surprisingly well - much better than many who predicted it would sound dated immediately. The fact is that Bowie maintained his rock sound to a degree that the drum-n-bass elements are simply frosting while other music in that genre that this album was being unfairly compared to has aged badly because it can’t outlive its genre.
I also may be one of the few who really love Hours. I’ve never gotten why that album was written off by so many, but most of that album is beautiful stuff.
(And I really like this box. Picked it up right before Christmas for $40 used, believe it or not, and love the treasure trove of b-sides. Heathen’s bonus disc is basically an album in between Heathen and Reality (it’s comprised of many of the remains of an earlier attempt at an Hours follow-up, which got shelved for some reason that I can’t understand. Great bunch of songs.)
it’s interesting how Bowie is so often described as the chameleon that he is..and yet the same people just could not deal with the (mild!) left turns of records like this one.
the same can be said for Tin Machine (who i really liked).
If Prodigy had been better lyricists, they might have stuck around longer. But you can “smack your bitch up” so many times before she gets a gun, knife, or other stabbing weapon.
The Chemical Brothers (who blew up at the same time) are still making good records though.
Man, I’ve been meaning to get back in here and discuss this album more with you guys.
First to Saleski: I’m not anti-Tin Machine. I’ve heard people all over the board on that and I’ve just never checked it out. Reeves Gabrels has been hit-n-miss with me on Bowie’s records, but I do want to check the discs out and see what I think.
Tom, you’re exactly right. I think the album stands up better now that the “electronica fad is over,” if you will. It’s a great album of songs that use rock and electronic components; what’s not to like?
Hours… has some brilliant, beautiful stuff on it. I’m not sure it’s as consistent a listen beginning to end as I’d like, but I remember writing a review of it in college. I loved the record then and still like it a lot now. I listened to it the other day as I was making my way through the box. I need to pay closer attention to the second disc.
Sahm, right on.
While I do think that Earthling is definitely decent, I also think it is woefully uninspired. I mean, you’ve got Little Wonder, which is great, and then you’ve got… increasingly boring versions of the same thing.
Technically, they are all very good songs. Bowie’s vocal delivery is great as well. But I can only hear the same song so many times. For me, there’s not much to the album past Little Wonder, Telling Lies, and Dead Man Walking (and that one only BARELY makes it :P).
I like “Seven Years in Tibet,” I think the sax break adds a nice touch and cleanses the sonic palette a bit. I also think you get something cool with the layered vocals on “Looking for Satellites.” I’m Afraid of Americans” is another one I like and “Telling Lies” has long been a favorite.
I don’t disagree that because Bowie so completely embraced electronica on this album that there is a certain sameness; it’s a flaw I’ve noticed in many other electronic albums. That’s where I think keeping the album to 9 songs and 45 minutes was a good move.
I didn’t find it uninspired but there are some tracks that are better than others. “
You know, I’m actually quite inclined to agree with you. And, truth be told, I listened to the album an awful lot when I first got it.
I guess what I was trying to say is that it, um, while I think it’s a good album, and I enjoy listening to it, I don’t come back to it often. I think that in the grand scheme of All Things Bowie, it pales in comparison to his other albums, especially the albums of that period. Black Tie White Noise, Buddha Of Suburbia, ‘hours…’ and Heathen are all far superior albums in my opinion.
Of course, I didn’t really have any personal connection/expectation for the album, so that may be where we differ. I often find that one’s perspective going into an album greatly affects one’s opinion of it. That might be what’s happening here.
As a result of the album not really being personal for me, I don’t have anything that really keeps me going through it.
Of course, maybe I’m just not that into this genre of music. XD That could always be it.
However, Earthling will always get props for having Gail Ann Dorsey on it — yay!
-Alex
P.S. While I do agree that Seven Years In Tibet is good (looooove that opening), I just think it suffers from same-yness more than the other tracks. Also, I am not the biggest fan of the album version of I’m Afraid of Americans, the V1 single edit is faaaar superior. But yeah, definitely a good song.
I saw Bowie on the Earthling tour in Washington DC and it’s still one of my favorite concerts of all time. He was in great vocal shape, the show was over 2 1/2 hours, and the new songs were terrific live. Around this time, he started rediscovering some of his older classics like “Always Crashing in the Same Car” and “The Supermen” and actually looked like he was enjoying himself (rather than having to trod out “Ziggy Stardust” or “Space Oddity” for the umpteenth time). Plus, Earthling holds up with (and trumps most of) his post Scary Monsters albums any day of the week (I do have a soft spot for …hours, though). It may not be “true” jungle music, but it sounds alot less dated because of it.