Like so much of what would become my favorite music, my introduction to David Bowie came via my older sister, Victoria, specifically her copy of Changesonebowie. A seismic compilation (although I don’t think either of us realized that, at the time), Changesonebowie arrived onto the stack of LP’s next to the family stereo circa summer 1978, and swiftly became an all-killer/no-filler favorite of the household (and a much-needed respite from the otherwise tireless airings of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and my well-loved copy of Dressed to Kill by KISS). A jaw-dropping array of seamless pop, balls-out rock, sinuous funk, spacey weirdness and glammy panache, Changesonebowie really had just about everything one could ever want, and like certain crucial records before it, notably Mothership Connection by Parliament, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and A Night at the Opera by Queen, it was a record we both completely adored in equal measure.
That said, we may have been more divided on the track listing itself. While my sister warmed to the poppier aspects of the record, like “Fame” and “Golden Years,” I tended to lean toward the more riff-driven barnburners like “Diamond Dogs” and “Suffragette City.” I could never quite reconcile the specific sequencing of side two, wherein the cocky guitar stomp of “Rebel Rebel” slid right into the faux-Philly soul shenanigans of “Young Americans,” largely signaling the end of the big rock portion of the record. I didn’t know it, at the time, but it was that very accomplished versatility to shape-shift that ultimately made the man the renowned artist he was, but everyone knows that, now.
If anything, that bemoaned sequencing of that compilation was no accident, itself being a canny encapsulation of what had occurred in that era of Bowie’s trajectory. While touring the grimly dystopian Diamond Dogs (far and away my favorite album by the great man), Bowie grew fatigued with its spiky guitars and proto-goth melodrama and started ditching its trappings for a different sound and style entirely, swapping corroded glam rock for so-called blue-eyed soul. This somewhat bewildering transition is best captured on the live projects David Live and Cracked Actor.
By the release of next studio LP, Young Americans, the transformation was complete. Smitten as I’d been by my first taste of Bowie’s oeuvre, when I started investing in his back catalog in the ensuing years, I deliberately eschewed Young Americans, unable to shake the stigma of that first association. The title track alone started to get on my nerves, a brazen crowd-pleaser for drunken sorority girls who couldn't seem to remember — let alone parse — the actually-quite-complicated lyrics when shouting along to it at keg parties, I considered “Young Americans” a pandering cop-out. Fuck that populist shit, I thought. Give me the weird stuff.
I, of course, was a stupid, young American myself, at the time.
In time, my ironclad adherence to solely “that which rocked” relaxed a bit. As ideally comes with gradual maturity, my tastes broadened to embrace bits of music outside of the parameters of whatever flimsy tribal affiliations I might have previously assigned to myself. Decades later, as a perplexed 54 year old trying to navigate the shifting tectonic plates of popular culture, I no longer care about how my listening habits might be perceived. In terms of my Bowie fandom, I became deeply enamored of all aspects of his discography, from the hard angles of his Berlin period to the folksy whimsy of his first recordings to the brazen accessibility of the Let’s Dance era and all points between and beyond.
But I never bought Young Americans. Or not until today, at least.
My friend John made a coyly telling declaration on Facebook, a couple of days ago, that being…
my cranky old hipster level is "I thought your movie looked cool until the trailer had a 70s Bowie tune in it and then you seemed real basic”
I smiled and hit “like” immediately, assuming he was talking about the clunkily witless placement of “Starman” in the preview to the new Pixar movie about Buzz Lightyear. Turns out he wasn’t. He was actually referring to the use of “Time” from Aladdin Sane in the trailer for “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” (a film he’d later concede was crazy well done). But the point remained the same. While not quite a deep cut, the employment of even a lesser-celebrated single like “Time” in a film’s trailer just seems like a lazy stab at broadcasting some aspired connotation of cool invariably well beyond the scope of your movie. Points off.
But then last night, while chugging through several episodes of Season 1 of Netflix’s “Mindhunter” (yes, I realize I’ve been leaning a bit too uncomfortably into serial-killer content, of late) I was struck by a nuanced, period-specific placement of a libidinously undulating funk track that I immediately recognized as David Bowie, but had still never heard before. Turns out, that song is called “Right,” and it’s the fourth track off of —WAIT FOR IT — Young Americans.
It’s, of course, brilliant.
Today, I strolled up to Academy Records on West 18th, ponied up eight bucks and finally succumbed to the charms of Young Americans.
Crank it.
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