Perfect picks and great breakdown of each album! We all have our personal picks and like the Beatles I waited every year for the new Bowie album to see what direction rock music was going, he was always ahead of his time in the '70s. 1) Ziggy Stardust, when glam rock was born, 2) Aladdin Sane (A Lad Insane) pure fire with Mick Ronson, 3) The Man Who Sold the World, more exploration on insanity with the raw guitar playing of Ronson, 4) Low-"a work of Art". 5) Station to Station, nothing like it at the time, 6) Diamond Dogs, apocalyptic sci-fi 7) Young Americans, very underrated 8) Pin-ups, I gotta have more Ronson! 9) Heroes 10) Hunky Dory 11) Lodger
As they said in Britain during the Punk years: "There's Old Wave and there's New Wave... and then there's DAVID BOWIE"😅 My favourite albums are 1. Station to Station 2. Heroes ( German pressing with Title song in German: incredible vocals!!!) 3. Diamond Dogs. Favourite songs are: the Return of the Thin White Duke, Wild is the Wind, Word on a Wing, Heroes, 5 years, Jean 🧞♂️
Can’t believe I missed this. Bowie and Neil Young, with possibly the Stones had the best album run in the 70’s; 10.Young Americans 09. Diamond Dogs 08.Heroes 07. Man Who Sold the World 06.Lodger 05.Low 04.Ziggy 03.Hunky Dory 02.Aladdin Sane 01.Station to Station
Always have a particular fondness for Station to Station as it was the first Bowie album I bought on release; but number 1 for me has to be Hunky Dory. It's interesting to see you rate it so highly as the particular English aesthetic of the album doesn't necessarily travel, and it is often ranked lower by other channels across the ocean.
Saw Bowie live in 1977 in Bristol with Iggy Pop and again in the early 80' s during the Let's dance Tour. Both concerts were utterly mesmerizing. What an incredible aura David had! 🎉
Thanks for this ranking of Bowie albums. I've got the first five. I never really officially listened to anything after Aladdin Sane. Your descriptions are helpful. Will start exploring the catalogue asap!
Great video. Personally my top 5 would be (order subject to change): Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Diamond Dogs, Station to Station, Low. I think you should also include Scary Monsters in your list even though it was released in 1980, it is the end of the classic run that began with 1971’s Hunky Dory.
Very interesting video, thanks. Bowie was my musical hero back in the 1970s, and I was lucky enough to see him in 1973, just after Aladdin Sane came out - amazing! Your top three would definitely be my top three - but for me the order changes from time to time. more recently , however I've recently been listening much more to MWSTW, it's become my go-to 70s Bowie album, and specifically the recently remixed "Metrobolist" version of it. If you haven't heard that, it's well worth listening to; Ronson's amazing guitar becomes more amazing, Bowie's Bolan impressions on Black Country Rock are given much greater prominence, it's really fantastic.
I loved many of Bowie’s singles but somehow never bought any of his albums (despite the snappy titles and sharp cover art). Learned a lot from this video, thanks! His discography should repay study for a long, long time.
You’re on a roll buddy, keep em comin! Enjoyed that. Think DB would have enjoyed the reggae version of Rock N Roll Suicide by Macy Gray (where’s she been?) on the Ziggy Stardub album. Pretty cool! Love the channel
Low is a truly groundbreaking work of art. I’ve heard people say that side 2 basically invented post-rock. For me though, Ziggy probably has to top the list.
I had issues with the line, "A queer threw up at the sight of that." Not sure what Bowie was implying, but I didn't like the sound of it. Like many lyrics on Ziggy and Aladdin. I think he was just spewing out a lot of stream-of-conscious , drug addled crap in the studio.
I first heard Watch That Man on a TV commercial. I think it was a fashion show-type commercial, maybe in the early 2000s, when Bowie was still very much alive so he approved the license of the song. Then I bought the album and loved it. Another great episode.
David spent a year working on his third album, The Man Who Sold the World, producing a mature recording that hinted at things to come. He'd release 11 LPs over the next ten years, increasing in quality as much as quantity. The fourth album, Hunky Dory, kicked in the doors of FM radio, with six radio-friendly cuts. Bowie's next album, his fifth, though, released barely six months after Hunky Dory, would make him an "overnight star". "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust ..." was tailor-made for the times, the Summer of 1972, released just the day before the Watergate break-in. The album was filled with the kind of tracks FM-radio stations were looking for, with songs for any mood, from glam-rock, to angst-driven teen drama. David Bowie was a star, thanks in no small measure to Mick Ronson, who gave Bowie's songs a knife-edge of sonic passion that made them ear-worms. Ronson would dress up Bowie's music through Pin Ups, then get dropped for daring to complain about the pitiful wages he was getting paid, and the lack of credit. Bowie would never acknowledge the critical contributions of the Spyders from Mars, or Ronson. He was a big star, after all. Best of David Bowie's '70s Albums 01 T H E R I S E A N D F A L L O F Z I G G Y S T A R D U S T A N D T H E S P I D E R S F R O M M A R S 02 A L A D D I N S A N E 03 Y O U N G A M E R I C A N S 04 H U N K Y D O R Y 05 D I A M O N D D O G S 06 S T A T I O N T O S T A T I O N 07 L O W 08 P I N U P S 09 H E R O E S 10 T H E M A N W H O S O L D T H E W O R L D 11 L O D G E R
Wow, I don’t have ‘ Pins Ups ‘ so I never knew that Bowie covered Floyd’s See Emily Play. I’ve gotta hear that. But of all his seventies material, i really like Station to Station the most. ‘ Ziggy ‘ of course is way up there, but I’m pretty burned out on that one. I actually prefer some of his deeper, more ambient music from Low and Heroes. And Aladdin Sane grows on me more all the time. It might someday end up being my favorite as well. Plus, I really need to put on Diamond Dogs again, just for 50th anniversary sake. A nice breakdown of his best work, Thanks Tom !
My Bowie collection starts with Hunky Dory, and I don't have Pin Ups, so I'll just rank the remaining nine. 9 Diamond Dogs, 8 Hunky Dory, 7 Young Americans, 6 Lodger, 5 Heroes, 4 Aladdinsane, 3 Low, 2 Ziggy Stardust, 1 Station to Station. I like them all, but those top six are all drop dead classics. My top two were of course written in stone, but six through three were tough to rank, they're pretty much interchangeable.
Can we take Bowie (and Iggy) at his word? He said that from the start he knew he was not a naturally talented singer, or songwriter, that for him music was the vehicle through which he wanted to perform theater. Was he just being modest? Bowie? In any case, it was an interesting filter to keep in mind when I listened to the 2022 release of 'Divine Symmetry (An Alternative Journey Through Hunky Dory)' since Hunky Dory is my choice for #1. We can hear him cobbling that album together, rejecting some songs, favoring others, in the studio and live situations. Rock history, so great. 'Station to Station' is second place.
Aladdin Sane is always high in the lists, but you're the first to have it as number one. A few albums had the one song that shouldn't have been there, in my opinion. "Let's Spend the...", "Fill your heart", "It Ain't Easy" and yeah, "Across the Universe". The out-takes from each of the respective albums were a lot better.
Great ranking, mine is very close to yours. I never got into his 90’s material much either, The Next Day is the only post 1980 album of his that I feel equals his 70’s work. Blackstar is phenomenal too but I always look at that one as its own animal and fairly removed from his overall catalog for some reason, take it easy!
Bowie's output for that entire decade is incredible. However, I have to say that "Scary Monsters" belongs among those albums. He was still writing great music with integrity (no shade against Let's Dance). And it was only a year out from the 70s.
What did I tell you? All over the place. Some of it depends on when and what you first heard. I had heard of Bowie before I actually heard the music -- around the time of Ziggy. I'd heard "Changes" -- who hadn't? Got a cut-out record of TMWSTW, dug it, and eventually added Aladdin and Pin Ups and Diamond Dogs, and got that 2LP collection of his novelty singles from the library, with mixed results. That's '74. Skip ahead to '76, I came into some money, picked up Hunky and Ziggy and Station -- again, with mixed results. The rest followed as released, but the anti-tech aesthetic of punk hijacked my listening pleasures.
You're spot on about Sons Of The Silent Age and Stay - great tracks. Lodger is my latest discovery. Curious how you feel about 1980's Scary Monsters. I'll weigh in: 11. Young Americans 10. Diamond Dogs 9. Pin Ups 8. The Man Who Sold The World 7. Heroes 6. Station To Station 5. Low 4. Lodger 3. Aladdin Sane 2. Hunky Dory 1. Ziggy
Scary Monsters is the last of his golden period. I like most of it. Ashes To Ashes, Fashion, Scary Monsters, It’s No Game, Because You’re Young are faves. Never got into anything much in the 80’s except for a few stray singles like Blue Jean. The 90’s and beyond I never cared for.
Diamond Dogs has always been my favourite, I like the sludgy seedy sound, not to mention a stellar track list. Like Neil Young, he was on absolute fire in the ‘70’s, , Low, Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, got to mention Red Sails off Lodger, it is brilliant, driving and off kilter pop, with a demented solo by Adrian Belew at the end.
I included collaborations as well, just to balance things out: Station to Station Low The Idiot Diamond Dogs Lodger "Heroes" Transformer Ziggy Stardust Hunky Dory Lust for Life Young Americans Aladdin Sane The Man Who Sold the World Pinups
Completely agree with everything. Ziggy should have stayed with the great underrated Mick Ronson. Always crashing the same car (Low) is Davids funniest, Sense of doubt (Heroes) his most depressive song. Bowie was a Genius.
Not sure why you limited yourself to the 70s album rather than the RCA albums. It's only two more albums -- Space Oddity (1969) and Scary Monsters (1980) -- which would give a fuller overlook of that period of his career. Would love to see where you ranked this two. PS Scary Monsters is my #2 from that period, after Aladdin Sane.
Young Americans is my favorite…..sometimes the way and time one is exposed to music makes all the difference. I agree with you though, Across the Universe doesn’t work. Saw him, in 1976, or thereabouts.
Brave man, Tom, brave man! The responses are going to be all over the map, and that includes me. Might as well start with my disqualifications -- the ones that I have never owned: The Lodger, which I don't think I have ever heard, and Young Americans, which gave me whiplash at the time, but I might like now (except for facking "Across The Universe", ew). OK, the rest are fine with me to varying degrees. The Man Who Sold The World, I love, every track, and when I replaced the record with a CD I switched around the insert so it showed the original cartoon cover. Hunky Dory is the best Bowie qua Bowie album, no doubt -- uneven, but always engaging. Ziggy has some overpowering tracks, but also some bullshit that I don't like and doesn't even make sense. Aladdin, much better, still some pretentious BS that annoys (unlike you, I think "Let's Spend The Night Together" is a high point on this record, and a real hoot, which is why we can't be friends 😆 ). Pinups would be my favorite Bowie album if it weren't for Hunky Dory -- I love all of it, except when the CD was released they put some crappy b-side on it at the end, so I burned a disc with a certain Stones cover replacing them. 😆 Diamond Dogs I liked very well, then sorta didn't, and now I think I would like even better, except for the ugly Dali-ripoff jacket -- if the record had a better cover, I would probably rate it as one of his very best. Station To Station I like quite a lot for its easy-listening vibe, and the Professor Longhair piano on "TVC 15". It has a Man Who Fell To Earth cover too. Low was full of fun and weirdness, and I woke up to it some too, because my local FM station was playing it. Nick Lowe named his next EP, Bowi, after it. Heroes I barely remember, other than that the title track sounded much better in German. So there you have my Oddyssy. I only saw Bowie once, when he was on tour with Iggy (on piano) -- you couldn't stop watching him, which is saying something because the lights weren't on him, and because, well, IGGY POP. You could make quite a radio show out of the Eno/Iggy/Bowie Berlin scene.
PS: The '60s singles amused me, I hated the '80s stuff, and never listened to anything after that. You kind of have to have CHANGESONEBOWIE for "John I'm Only Dancing". Bowie Live is kind of irrelevant, although I do love "Knock On Wood".
Tom, I can buy that if you put "Let's Spend The Night Together " on Pin Ups, as I did. I still don't like "Lady Grinning Soul" and "Rock'n'roll Suicide", though. Sucks to be me.
