Black Tie White Noise by David Bowie: classic or dud?

Yes...Tonight has two good singles, and Never Let Me Down is simply fantastic - one of Bowie's best 5 records.

Bowie's "recovery" came with Buddha Of Suburbia. Even then it has been a weak recovery. Not one of his more recent output can really be favourably be compared with Station To Station, Ziggy, Low et al. Outside, Earthling, Heathen - they're all about half good or less, each with 3 or 4 good tracks. Hours and Reality have even less. Maybe Bowie needs to do a Scott Walker, go away for ten years then hit us over the head with some wild liminal thang.

**What on earth could they have found to fill up an extra CD?**

I used to have this, but can't remember any specifics other than the fact that it was absolutely terrible.

What do you think are Bowie's best 5 records, Dr. C?

Ziggy
Low
Lodger
Diamond Dogs
Never Let Me Down

You honest-to-god believe Never Let Me Down is better than Heroes, Station To Station or Hunky Dory?

the album proper though has been revisited several times in the last few years (twas that article on stylus did it) and i reckon its a 'grower'.

neither good nor bad but somewhere in between ..

Hunky Dory - 7
Ziggy Stardust - 5 (never got into it)
Aladdin Sane - 8 ("time falls wanking to the floor" he crooned, just as my dad came in from work)
Diamond Dogs - 8
Young Americans - 4 (never got into this either)
Station To Station - 7
Low - 10 (beginning of time)
Heroes - 6 (the Amnesiac to Low's Kid B)
Lodger - 6 (only when set next to Fear Of Music)
Scary Monsters - 7

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=902

For better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

It might not be the most loathed Bowie solo album, that would probably be 87’s Never Let Me Down, but it’s definitely one of the most ignored. The casual Bowie historian will tell you it’s just a transitional album between the Tin Machine debacle and the semi solid creative footing of The Buddha of Suburbia. But this is Bowie slowly flexing his creative muscles after a five album run of crap; stirring from the between the sheets of wanting to be seen as a popular working artist and a relevant one. The magnificent album title conjured up images of sharp suits and feedback, a lean Afghan Whigs with an EVOL era Sonic Youth obsession, yet obviously never deliver on this imaginary non existent promise. Now I come to think of it, And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead were supposed to be delivering that, and they didn’t bother either.

Black Tie White Noise was most certainly not a bid for commercial success from Bowie and Nile Rogers a la their Let’s Dance collaboration; Rogers is adamant he was offering Bowie much stronger arrangements and catchier hooks, but Bowie refused them wanting to stick to his own vision of the album. Bowie uses Rogers here as both a PR (the boys who brought you “Modern Love” are back!) adrenaline shot and a rhythmic foil (never his strong point), but the closest the pair get to the “Lets Dance” era sound is the vague resemblance found on the cover of “I Feel Free”. But the song doesn’t gel with the dancefloor at all as its just too glib, even the enjoyment found in Mick Ronson’s noisily unfastened playing and Bowie’s own dissonant saxophone can’t shake any more excitement out of the song. Despite this and one other minor setback (the schmaltzy Don’t let me Down and Down has the aura of the theme from Moonlighting), he’s pulled together a strong batch of songs and, as usual, brought the best from the players around him. He cajoles exceptional performances all over the album from Lester Bowie, whose idiosyncratically musical style fills the role normally played by Mike Garson. In fact they go marvellously head to head on “Looking for Lester” on which they ride back and forth over firm percussion.

The idea of this being any sort of wedding concept album lays only in the opening instrumental “The Wedding” and closer “The Wedding Song”; lulling you in and out of the album with same music. On first listen it’s just treated saxophone over a plain old housey piano line and bass, but as the layers build the duelling sax lines begin to resemble the Adhan call with Church of England wedding bells ringing underneath; a subtle mash-up of cultural heritages. Another spiritually themed but unrelated piece is “Pallas Athena” with its martial strings, tribal chants and single lyric ‘god is on top of it all, and that’s’ voiced by a creepily deep Bowie.

Centrepiece of the album is unavoidably “Jump They Say” which ricochets from a faulty drum intro into an all conquering single. A squashed backwards horn loop competes with his wailing saxophone on this thoroughly modern sounding, sweeping, energetic track. Signalling a return to lyrical cut ups it switches around between Biblical waffle, Poe imagery and conversational snatches, there is a malignant edge to his twin high/low vocal lines.

Bowie’s penchant for covers gets exercised, and the two here are well referenced in Bowie’s current and past influential appeal. Morrissey’s “I know it’s Gonna Happen Someday” is in essence Bowie covering Morrissey impersonating Bowie and is given the Gospel choir, full voiced Bowie treatment, and is far superior to the original. A great echoing piano sound is somewhat marred though by Wild T. Springer’s guitar solo which is a little too cocaine Clapton for my taste. Scott Walker’s “Nite Flights” is a rebranding of the original which was influenced by Bowie and Eno’s late Seventies work; quirky squeaks, spaceship engine drones and an energy of fake modernity with only the beats grounding the song, his Walkeresque harmonising with himself recalls his Tilt.

The Walker shadow looms again with the hum of the dark storm clouds on the introduction to “You’ve been Around”, its vocal stylings and self harmonies are very similar to those on Walker’s own Tilt and predate it by two years; the cycle continues. The brisk synthetic upright bassline is typical Rogers, a signature sound as part of his strict well marshalled funk. There’s even a nod to the past with the line ‘You’ve changed me….ch ch ch ch ch changed’.

Its the most commercial tracks on Black Tie White Noise that take the most crap, the poppy “Miracle Goodnight” (driven by a call and response trumpet and chorus of Davids’ that’s surprisingly cheery) and of course the title track. There is always much hilarity at even the mere mention of Al B Sure!’s name and his duet on the title track (scurrilously slagged as a post LA Riot “Ebony and Ivory”) is late night modern soul with a great mono wah-wah intro and the other Bowie’s outstanding trumpet. It can be, and will be, viewed as the vaguely cheesy ramblings of a middle aged man, but its becoming a rarity to hear someone touch upon that subject without being aggressive or dismissive.

This would’ve been a far more esoteric, enjoyable and universally accepted collection if Rodgers hadn’t been involved at all, leaving Bowie to fully realise the darker edges. Black Tie White Noise is much more than a step in the right direction and deserves your re-acquaintance.

OK, here's my rundown
Hunky Dory - 8: the first Bowie album to really hit the nail on the head, there's really not a lot wrong with this. I even like Kooks.
Ziggy Stardust - 8: I never liked It Ain't Easy, but lately even that's been growing on me.
Aladdin Sane - 6: not quite as solid. Title track superb, time wanking on the floor is just a bit too histrionically camped up, the Stones cover is a low point
Diamond Dogs - 8: title track a bit too plodding, Rebel Rebel is good but doesn't really fit with the rest of the album. Sweet Thing is an all-time career highlight though.
Young Americans - 6: somehow this album works when it shouldn't really. Let down by Lennon cover, and I'm not so keen on Fame either. Title track superb.
Station To Station - 9.5 His masterpiece for me. Fucked up rock/funk hybrid, schizoid lyrics. Cocaine romanticism at its finest. But TVC15 a little weak perhaps?
Low - 9: Superb from start to finish. Maybe Weeping Wall is a bit too derivative of Steve Reich.
Heroes - 8.5: doesn't quite pack the punch of Low, but I think I prefer its instrumentals.
Lodger - 7.5: lovely eclectic feel to this album, less angsty than its predecessors
Scary Monsters - 6: 1st side faultless, but I'm not convinced by side 2

A rather vast generalisation, n'est-ce pas?

I don't hate it, but I find it a bit less interesting than the rest of the album - the beat isn't as interesting, I'm not sure if the humour works in the context, etc etc. It's just not quite as good as the rest.

I forgot Pin-Ups - never really saw the point of that(presumably "Let's Spend The Night Together" inspired the idea; either that or writing block, or he heard Ferry's These Foolish Things and wanted to try it)

Heroes would be my number 6. STS doesn't knock me out - it's very good, but has never fully engaged me. I don't like Hunky Dory much.

Here's my marks out of ten.
David Bowie - 8 (this is great stuff!)
Space Oddity - 5
The Man Who Sold The World - 6
Hunky Dory - 5 (meh!)
Ziggy Stardust - 10 (but the BBC versions would rate 11 - for Ronno's guitar sound alone)
Pin-Ups - 8 (great songs, mad delivery)
Aladdin Sane - 7 (I could be being unfair to this)
Diamond Dogs - 9 (widescreen beauty)
Young Americans - 6 (but it's fun)
Station To Station - 7
Low - 10 (the new music)
Heroes - 8 (side 2 is maybe better than Low's side 2)
Lodger - 9 (instinctive brilliance - Bowie feeding off the new wave and splurging ideas back out)
Scary Monsters - 7 ('She could have been a killer if she didn't walk the way that she do/And she do')
Let's Dance - 6 (but a good 6)
Tonight - 5
Never Let Me Down - 8 ('You are my moon, you are my sun/Heaven knows what you are')
Tin Machine - 6 (ha - I like it!)
Tin Machine II - never heard it
Black Tie White Noise - 1
Buddha Of Suburbia - 6
Outisde - never heard
Earthling - never heard
...Hours - 6 ('People boys all snowy white/Razzle dazzle clubs every night)
Heathen - 6
Reality - never heard

1. Low
2. Ziggy
3. Heroes
4. Hunky Dory
5. Scary Monsters
6. Lodger
7. Aladdin Sane
8. Station to Station
9. Earthling
10. Diamond Dogs
11. Heathen
12. 1. Outside
13. Man Who Sold the World
14. Let's Dance
15. Space Oddity
16. David Bowie and other early odds n' ends
17. Young Americans
18. Never Let Me Down
19. Tin Machine
20. Tin Machine 2
21. Pin Ups (I can see it being higher, since it pretty much created the covers album as we know it, but ehh...)
22. Buddha of Suburbia
23. Black Tie White Noise
24. Reality
25. Tonight
26. ...Hours (what a boring album...and it came out at the height of my teenage Bowie obsession too)

I'm finding myself rather obsessed with "Jump They Say" at the moment.

There are worse things to get obsessed about :)
Song and video are fantastic.
Got to be/lieieieieieieve some/bo/dy

Love that song. And Lester Bowie solos!

"Jump They Say" made my Bowie ballot.

I suppose I'm biased b/c BTWN was the first new Bowie album I owned and it pales only beside later achievements but it's half a fantastic record.

the title track was one of the troll votes on my Bowie ballot

Al B Sure!!!

yes i'm sure!

album is at least half classic. really one that got unfairly maligned.

It got terrific reviews at the time.

"It's not Tin Machine! *****" - Rolling Stone

pretty much. The main review too.

It was a pretty big step up from Never Let Me Down and Tonight though, no? RS likes to go nuts for so-so records that follow awful records.

RS awarded the first Tin Machine album a good review for the same reason.

It's better than Tonight, NLMD, TM (except for TM's title track), and TM2 (except maybe 'Baby Universal' which I liked at the time, being 17 and stupid). But that's not really saying much. Half of the tracks on BTWN are still disposable. The title cut is listenable despite or maybe because of the lyrics. The Morissey cover is yet another example of DB doing a crap overblown cover devoid of the original's emotion and human scale (see also 'God Only Knows').

And 'Jump They Say' is great, an absolutely bang on target pop song of it's time.

The first three tracks, all killers: The Wedding, You've Been Around (underrated as hell), I Feel Free. I'll also take Jump They Say, Miracle Goodnight (great video too), Nite Flights, and Pallas Athena.

"I Know It's Gonna Happen" isn't great but it's far wittier than "God Only Knows."

Well the one thing that can be said about GOK vs IKIGHS is that on the latter at least DB sounds like he's awake.

BTWN is not his most focused record, necessarily, but it's definitely not boring. The production is a little obvious and big-bam-boomy in places, but for the most part the record has a classy, high gloss contemporary (or whatever passed for contemporary in 1993) sound.

Someone upthread, I think, lamented that Nile Rodgers was involved bc in his absence Bowie would have been more free to experiment. But like a lot of his post-TM record, BTWN feels like something Bowie made for himself -- sort of a meditation on how different parts of his history and legacy coexist when they sit next to each other.

It doesn't always work, but I'm not sure it's totally supposed to. Regardless, I kind of like how, say, the vocoder on "You've Been Around" and squiggly filter processing on "Jump They Say" results in this sort of mashup of commercial and avant.

The Bowiesongs blog has been going into this one big time:

http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/category/black-tie-white-noise-1993/

yeah, bowiesongs gets to his nite flights, goes into the whole scott v bowie thang - http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/nite-flights/

genuinely tempted to listen to black tie white noise again for first time since hearing a friend's copy once twenty years ago. the obv classic 'jump they say' aside i remember it being dire, a notch above never let me down maybe but nothing compared to outside or earthling, comparable to hours maybe. dire. it's made much much more interesting reading than the tin machine stuff though.

Keepers:

The Wedding
You've Been Around
I Feel Free
Jump They Say
Nite Flights
Pallas Athena

I prefer Bowie's cover of "Nite Flights" ftr

you CRAZY

haha if these days Bowie's vocals annoy me in a way they didn't when I was 18 what makes you think Scott Walker has a chance?

I agree with Alfred's keepers list and it's a pretty good ratio of good to bad (I like his Morrissey cover too and Baby Can't Dance).

Maybe Bowie needs to do a Scott Walker, go away for ten years then hit us over the head with some wild liminal thang

whoa

I think I've figured out what baffled me about this album, the first Bowie album I bought at the time of release: it's a much-deferred sophisti-pop mood. The doublebreasted suits, the perfect hair, Al B Sure!, Lester Bowie, Sinatra moves in the sleeve photos. Nothing could've been more out of time in late spring '93 than sophisti-pop.

mood = move

if anyone wants to think Bowie stopped being Karma Chameleon in the nineties, play him the first singles of his solo albums: "Jump They Say," "The Heart's Filthy Lesson," "Little Wonder," "Thursday's Child."

oh yeah it's very out-of-time sophistipop, especially "don't let me down & down." there's a lot of tension running through this record, between pop and avant, between modern and classic forms.

surprising no one, it's one of my favorite bowie records

i think i know its gonna happen, and dont let me down are the keepers on this.

haha rong but I love you

have you got any keepers for this?

the one with al b sure is good too :)

i love this album so it's almost all keepers for me. only the title track seems like an unfortunate miscalculation

lol xpost

Jump They Say
The Wedding
You've Been Around
Pallas Athena
I Feel Free

what about "miracle goodnight"

oh right

I like Miracle Goodnight too. I'd rather listen to this than Tonight, Never Let Me Down or the Tin Machine albums.

Oh and I also like the Nite Flights cover.

First time I heard "I can't give everything away" I found it very reminiscent of BTWN.

id like a mix without quite so much of the of-its-time kitchen sink 90s production

aw that's part of the appeal for me

you've been around is one of my very favorite bowie songs.

That sawtooth synth, the loud drum thwacks, the way Bowie and Rodgers mix Gabrels guitar down to this petulant growl, Bowie's processed vocal -- nice buildup

you've changed me
ch-ch-changed me

Possibly his most Scott Walker track. Vocoder, bgd vox and histrionic melody to nowhere could be off Nite Flights or Climate of Hunter.

Look back in anger is v v Scott too

The first new Bowie album to be released since discovering him as an early teen and therefore a huge sentimental favorite for me. It does't quite sound like anything else by anybody.

^^^ my boy

I'm sick and tired of telling you.

Apart from 'Jump They Say', I really don't like this record. Outside is where he "got it back", for me.

In fact, if you ignore the fact that hours... unfortunately exists, then Outside, Earthling, Heathen, Reality, The Next Day and Blackstar isn't that bad of a series of albums.

Big dud.

David Bowie didn't release anything listenable between some tracks off of 'Tonight' and 'Earthling' imo.

In fact, if you ignore the fact that hours... unfortunately exists, then Outside, Earthling, Heathen, Reality, The Next Day and Blackstar isn't that bad of a series of albums.

i agree wholeheartedly with this statement.

Maybe Bowie needs to do a Scott Walker, go away for ten years then hit us over the head with some wild liminal thang.

― Humberto C. Antunes, Tuesday, March 21, 2006 12:42 PM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Only The Next Day wasn't some wild liminal thang, it was Bowie picking up where he left off. Only once he'd got that out of his system could he produce his final masterpiece.

As for BTWN, it's mediocre Bowie at best.

There were a couple of bits of The Next day which were more along those lines - but yes, I'm talking about Blackstar.

this album is ok. it does have a bit of a cheap feel to it in the production and the packaging though. like Pallas Athena is fine, I don't mind it, but it's wholly unnecessary and generic. But I really love his version of Nite Flights, as good as the Walker Brothers'.

I had the cassette version and the packaging seemed fine, perhaps a step above most new albums on cassette at the time. 'Miracle Goodnight' seemed a bit tinny, but I thought it was a stylistic choice rather than cheap production.

i meant the artwork in general. it's just kind of ...cheap looking. maybe par for the course for those years, they were not the best years for graphic design and amazing album covers, but it's just boring looking. Miracle Goodnight is another one...great song, but it sounds so thin. Anyway, the album certainly isn't 'bad'.

Bowie wore more face powder on the sleeve than my grandma.

I guess there's an early Photoshop feel to the packaging, especially as there was a uniform look to the different formats the album was released in, as well as video packaging and in-store displays. There's also the release around the same time of the Singles Collection, whose cover used a picture of Bowie in a hat singing into a 50s style mic that seems to have been taken at the same photo session as the pictures for BTWN. Overall there's the feeling of a lot of promotional material all being created at the same time in a blizzard of copy & paste and image filters.

they used that mic image in the rolling stone article at the time too (one of a series of 'next album is his best since Scary Monsters and back to the Bowie we knew!) articles that started showing up with NLMD and never stopped)

Photoshop?!

More like Corel Draw '93.

Never Let Me Down is simply fantastic - one of Bowie's best 5 records.

Just seen this at the top of the thread, from 13 years ago. Holy christ.

The sentence that immediately preceeds that, about 'Tonight' having two good singles, is right if you can stand 'Loving The Alien' (I can't). If you remove 'Blue Jean' from the tracklist, then arguably 'Tonight' is worse than 'Never Let Me Down'.

(but every other Bowie studio album is better than NLMD, even 'hours')

I can see why hardcore Bowie fans would dislike Loving The Alien, but in the context of his largely awful 1980s it sounds like manna from heaven.

It's mad that he somehow managed to come up with Absolute Beginners, one of his very best songs, in the middle of easily the worst creative trough of his entire career.

The sentence that immediately preceeds that, about 'Tonight' having two good singles, is right if you can stand 'Loving The Alien' (I can't). If you remove 'Blue Jean' from the tracklist, then arguably 'Tonight' is worse than 'Never Let Me Down'.

otm

(but every other Bowie studio album is better than NLMD, even 'hours')

― Being cheap is expensive (snoball),

not otm

Was there any kind of consensus reached about the remixed version of NLMD?

I was excited to see that Nico Muhly was involved (I"m a big fan), or could it not be revived from the operating table?

All three albums are terrible. 'hours' at least sounds like Bowie had a clearer idea of what he wanted the album to sound like, even if the songs individually are worse then anything on Tonight or NLMD. I appreciate a songwriter with an overarching ambition for a record, even if the result falls totally flat. Trying and failing seems better to me than calculated attempts at Phil Collins arena audience blandness. That's why I rate both Tin Machine albums highly even though I'd probably never want to listen to either of them again - Smashie & Niceie Backman Turner Overdrive LET'S ROCK is NAGL but it's preferable to trying to fit into a late 80s yuppie record collection.

The poor songwriting and shoddy design (that sleeve! those sandals!) reduce hours into his worst album since NLMD. No Jacket Required has vim, production adequate to its songs.

the remixed version of NLMD is an improvement for the most part, yes, but it's still not great.

hours is his worst since NLMD yes. I actually fault the arrangements and production more than the songwriting; I think something better could have been made of those songs. It was just time for Reeves Gabrels to leave.

Dud, but "Jump They Say" is all right and the Morrissey cover's a gem.