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Rating: Having put the Tin Machine experience behind him, deliberately antagonistic and anti-commercial, the David Bowie of 1992, artistically reinvigorated after the decline in inspiration during the '80s, is eager to return to the spotlight and reclaim his rightful place in British pop.
However, the signals are conflicting: on one side, there's the creative urgency and the need to channel recent musical passions into a mature and free album; on the other, the marriage to supermodel Iman and the appearance at the megaconcert in memory of Freddie Mercury are signs of the desire to reintroduce himself to a mainstream audience and to break a commercial drought of over five years.
This contradiction is well represented in Black Tie White Noise, released in 1993: experimentation and cross-genre contamination are accompanied by a fashionable approach that sometimes weighs down the tracks and makes the work appear dated nearly 20 years later.
Even though Bowie firmly denied it at the time, the choice of Nile Rodgers as producer, the man responsible for the multimillion explosion of Let's Dance, seemed functional to endow the tracks with a veneer of commercial appeal. In reality, during the recordings, unlike what happened 10 years earlier, Bowie's cultured and "European" approach prevailed: Rodgers later complained about not being able to develop his insights, almost as if he was prevented from delivering another hit album.
The overall quality is high: the lyrics return to being impressionistic and erudite; the experimental element is present (in "You've Been Around" Reeves Gabrels's guitar is cut up, reassembled, and looped); the guests present contribute effectively and do not overindulge (except for the poor Mick Ronson, already stricken by a terminal illness, who fails to deliver the "sting" to the cover of the Cream's "I Feel Free"). Highlight episodes include the launch single, "Jump They Say" (which, thanks to an excellent video by Mark Romanek, reestablished, albeit briefly, a connection with the charts), and "Pallas Athena", marking the first sign of the interest in disco-trance that would be developed in Earthling.
What most characterizes the album's sound is the presence, in many tracks, of the trumpet of Lester Bowie, which bursts in with its solos to enrich the musical textures, and the sax of the man himself, squawking here and there with results that are sometimes irritating.
Too many covers, even four plus a self-reimagining (the same "You've Been Around" is a revival from the Tin Machine era), almost highlighting that it's an album of sounds, atmospheres, arrangements, and interpretations rather than (new and valid) songs. Worth remembering is the remake of "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday", written by Morrissey as a tribute to "Rock'n'Roll Suicide" (from Ziggy Stardust), appropriately included in the most glam album of the ex-Smiths, and revisited by Bowie in a perverse narcissistic hall of mirrors (as he himself said, he wanted to do "David Bowie doing Morrissey doing David Bowie").
Ultimately, a transitional album, at the time hailed by critics and audience, perhaps a bit hastily, as a grand return to the former glory days, but nonetheless represents a prelude to the more substantial musical dishes that the regenerated Bowie would cook up for the rest of the '90s.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 You've Been Around (04:43)
Where's the pain in the violent night?
I'm depressed by the grin
I stay over many years
I should have thought of that
For the love of the money
Like a black-hearted violin
It's the nature of being
It's too many lonely nights
I can't tell bad from wrong
I can't pass you by
Two exchanging
You've been around
But you've changed me
Where the flesh meets the spirit world
Where the traffic is thin
I slip from a vacant view
I should have thought of that
And the sound of tomorrow
Like a black-hearted vile thing
Like the silence of tension
It's too many lonely nights
I can't tell good from bad
I can't pass you by
Too exchanging
You've been around
But you've changed me
You've been around
Can't pass you by
You've been around
But you've changed me
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-change!
Too exchanging
You've been around
but you've changed me
You've been around
can't pass you by
05 Jump They Say (04:23)
When comes the shaking man
A nation in his eyes
Striped with blood and emblazed tattoo
Streaking cathedral spire
They say
he has no brain
They say
he has no mood
They say
he was born again
They say
look at him climb
They say 'Jump'
They say
he has two gods
They say
he has no fear
They say
he has no eyes
They say
he has no mouth
They say hey that's really something
They feel he should get some time
I say he should watch his ass
My friend don't listen to the crowd
They say 'Jump'
Got to believe somebody
Got to believe
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