David Bowie: There’s Only One Record In His Career He Regrets

While David Bowie released a series of albums that established him as a musical great, his career was not without scattered mistakes. Although his artistic level was very high, Bowie did not always possess the right keys to success.

How does it exist”Life On Mars“there is also”Too Dizzy“, which the author, aware of the level, once described as “to be thrown away”. Of course, as happens to many artists, countless other songs did not reach the completion stage because they did not meet the standards that Bowie had set for himself.

In his artistic life, Bowie was a perennial risk-taker, a positive and at the same time penalizing element for him who in some cases found himself risking his creativity, trying to make an avant-garde masterpiece. The English artist himself was aware that not everything he touched turned to gold.

All his fans expected Bowie’s music to continue in impeccable style after establishing himself among the most innovative artists of the Seventies. However, Bowie felt the weight of expectations as he reached the pinnacle of success and entered a phase of creative difficulty, facing difficult periods in the 1980s and 1990s. This caused a backlash on his career and on the man.

In the early 1980s, Bowie found himself without a record label and it seemed as if the music industry had turned away from him. However, being the unpredictable figure he was, Bowie responded to the criticism in spectacular fashion with “Let’s Dance” in 1983, a record that launched him back into the spotlight and brought him back to those levels he hadn’t reached for years.

From there it began a sort of “roller coaster” and Bowie was unable to immediately recapture the brilliance of “Let’s Dance” in the next two projects: “Tonight” (from 1984 which includes a collaboration with Tina Turner and the presence of Iggy Pop – the two recovered old compositions dating back to “Lust for Life” from 1977 and a cover of “God Only Knows” by Beach Boys) And “Never Let Me Down”. Two albums that were far from living up to expectations and Bowie didn’t need critics to warn him of his decline. In reality, the commercial success of the two albums was not disastrous, on the contrary, but, especially the second work, it lacked response from the USA and the criticism was merciless.

“The high esteem of the public at that time meant absolutely nothing to me,” Bowie reflected to Rolling Stone in 1995. “It didn’t make me feel good. I felt dissatisfied with everything I was doing and eventually this started to show in my work. “Let’s Dance” was an excellent album in a certain genre, but the next two albums “Tonight” and “Never Let Me Down” showed that my lack of interest in my work was becoming really transparent. My nadir was “Never Let Me Down”. It was a truly awful album“.

Bowie didn’t particularly care about the commercial success of an album, as long as, in his perception, he could hold his head high knowing that it represented him as an artist and that it was made from the heart. However, with “Never Let Me Down” disappointed itself. The singer explained: “I’ve come to a point where I’m not very critical of myself. I express what I do, whether it’s in visual arts or music, because I know that everything I do is truly heartfelt. Even though artistically it’s a failure, it doesn’t bother me like “Never Let Me Down” bothers me. I shouldn’t even have bothered to go into the studio to record it. In fact, when I play it, I sometimes wonder if I did.

Bowie had lost sight of who he was at this stage of his career and his output reflected this and one wondered if he would ever make another masterpiece. Masterpiece that then arrived: “Outside” in 1995 would mark the moment Bowie found his form again.

Bowie could accept making missteps when he followed his feelings, but deep down he always knew that “Never Let Me Down” should never have been recorded, much less released. Fortunately, thanks to everything else in his catalogue, that album represents only a misstep, a microscopic black spot on his excellent CV.