David Bowie
Never Let Me Down

THE REVIEW

Judged by critics and fans as Bowie's worst record, "Never Let Me Down" has sometimes been described as proof that even the greats can have catastrophic failures.

Why review it? First of all, I don't like duplicates (which in Bowie's case would be triplicates and quadruplicates), and if others have devoured the roast, all that remains for me are the bones of the broth; also, I like to find, somewhat masochistically, positive aspects even in lackluster works like these.

I must preface that only completers might feel the need to purchase this album among the 26 official records in the White Duke's discography, but in my opinion, whoever does so won’t have an infamous album in their hands.

First of all, the renewed effort as an author: after the laziness of "Let's Dance" and "Tonight", here there's the impression that he sat at a table to squeeze his brains for ten new tracks (plus a cover, for a change, of Iggy Pop), and a couple of B-sides (for completers, Julie and Girls) of a higher level than the album but inexplicably excluded from the tracklist. The result is unfortunately uniformly mediocre: if in the previous two albums the singles stood out clearly against the other filler tracks, here there is a lack of flair, a stroke of writing, a track worthy of being included in Bowie's repertoire (perhaps "Time Will Crawl" and especially "Glass Spider", a theatrical piece, chosen as the opener for subsequent concerts, are salvageable), and it’s no coincidence that after 1987 no track will be performed live again, and one of the pieces will even be omitted in subsequent reissues.

The production here is also overloaded, but at least there is an abandonment of excessive synthesizers in favor of a more rock and guitar-oriented sound. Vocally the album is varied, no longer dominated by the monotonous baritone and complacent tone, but each song has a different and, regardless of the outcomes, convinced approach; furthermore, the author gets his hands dirty again by playing various instruments. The lineup of musicians is renewed with the return of the old glory Peter Frampton on guitar, and with the introduction of Erdal Zizilcay, a talented multi-instrumentalist of Turkish origin (not exactly Brian Eno, but this is what the convent provided).

All things considered, this is a more sincere and less fashionable album than the previous two, but with utterly forgettable and less inspired tracks, and there's the impression that the author wanted, in vain, to regain centrality as a musician, abandoning the role of a global showman: the sincerity of this approach is proven by the fact that, despite the flop, the attempt will be repeated and radicalized with the experience of Tin Machine.