Search - David Bowie :: Young Americans Special Edition

Why don't you take it? right to your heart . . .

Boxodreams | district of columbia | 01/19/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The center still held in 1975, even as pop and rock music continued to explode all over the place. Radio, believe it or not, kids, wielded authority and even adventurous listeners and fans held preconceptions about what recording artists should sound like. David Bowie would never be mistaken for conformist or conventional. "Young Americans" the single was a zeitgeist moment and a helluva hit for this great and strung-out talent, but it was more of a calling card than the meat of the album. Those songs, "Win," "Fascination, "Can You Hear Me," "Right," were not treated kindly by Bowie fans or a lot of the press. I thought about this today when I played a Stanley Turrentine album from the same year called "In the Pocket" that Downbeat gave one star to and everybody ripped. It, like "Young Americans" is filled with a cool Philly soul sound with touches of impending disco and both have a commanding presence at the center -- the Bowie croon, the Sanborn horn. These artists weren't playing what people wanted or expected from them and paid for it critically. Now, they look like pop visionaries. Bowie had completely shed his filthy spandex theatrical space glam from "Diamond Dogs" just a year earlier. How he went in such short order from the creeped-out, post-apocalypse, where "the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare" to fully inhabiting the deliciously taut, coke-fueled bedroom seduction of "Right" is a pop music miracle."