David Bowie 1983 - 2016

In a career full of turning points, none was as sharp as the one David Bowie experienced after his 1983 album Let’s Dance. The record gave Bowie the hit that he wanted but completely altered his artistic standing in the process. Instead of an innovator who pushed rock music forward, the singer found himself a global superstar with a mass audience whose tastes he didn’t understand and who reciprocated this feeling as the decade unfolded. After immersing himself in the band project Tin Machine, Bowie spent the 1990s embracing reinvention and experimentation with mixed but often fascinating results, leading to a full-fledged renaissance early in the 21st century. From there, his story only got stranger. 2013’s The Next Day was a triumphant comeback after years of self-imposed silence, while 2016’s Blackstar stood among his most challenging albums and became the final release of his lifetime. One constant is that the records David Bowie released during this time were ultimately the ones he chose to release using his own artistic vision. This book considers all those releases on their own merits, away from the shadow of his 1970s landmarks. Even if Bowie himself didn’t always appreciate the results, every album featured songs worthy of his reputation.