2 - David Bowie aka Space Oddity
If the first album is Bowie as Cabaret singer, this is his folk rock album. The story is Deram dropped him after the first album, and Space Oddity is the song his brain puked out when the people around him finally got him to write something and convince a new label to publish it. That's definitely a recurring theme in his biography. He's a songwriter/singer/what-have-you, but the people around him have to actually force him to get up and actually do something. You also get a very clear picture that, especially with these early albums, it's a "what's the state of mainstream music? Oh sure i can do that too, here it is" kind of game. Remember how psych rock gave way to folk rock in all the 68-70 albums i talked about, how everybody wrote something about space in 1969, etc.? Whether it's true or not, that's where my perception of Bowie comes from; this is exactly the same as what everyone was doing, but with Bowie's own take on the subject.
Like the first album, the central theme sure seems to be the individual vs. the larger world he lives in, the one against the many. Major Tom, a Jesus figure, a shoplifter, an ex-boyfriend, all characters who suffer in whatever particular role the world at large looks to them to fulfill.
Basically, i think you have to actually join the cult of David Bowie and pretend he's a deity of some sort in order to get past the fact that he's endlessly singing "please don't join my cult, because i don't want to be your god." Maybe that's too specific. Maybe he's really just trying to point out the very real phenomenon of the most famous and successful being cripplingly self-conscious and fighting a daily battle with their own inferiority complexes. Everyone forces you into a box, and there's nothing you can do to make that enjoyable.
Is that a fair assessment? I don't know, but once again none of it sounds like hack work. It doesn't sound clumsy or heavy-handed, nor does it sound egotistically whiny or pretentious. Every song sounds like he meant it, like he did it on purpose, this is just the subject matter he's interested in and he doesn't care if you like it or not. It's quite good, i don't hate any of it, but it feels very straightforward. There's no hidden message or agenda, no artistic ideal he's struggling to express, no sense of failure to achieve something.
If you haven't noticed, the better an album is the less i have to actually say about it. Every song is great, i can't agree with the critics when they single out Space Oddity and Cygnet Committee then throw the rest in the trash. Those songs don't stand out, none of the others are "less" in any way. None of the songs contradict his artistic perspective. He's 24 for 24 as far as bottle is concerned.
3 - The Man Who Sold The World
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