David Bowie - Earthling (1997) Producer: David Bowie, Mark Plati, Reeves Gabrels Little Wonder Looking for Satellites Battle for Britain (The Letter) Seven Years in Tibet Dead Man Walking Telling Lies The Last Thing You Should Do I'm Afraid of Americans Law (Earthlings on Fire) Released in 1997, Earthling is the twentieth studio album by David Bowie (I'm not counting his The Buddha of Suburbia Soundtrack). The origins of Earthling can be traced back to his previous 'industrial' studio album, Outside. Now, as hit and miss as Outside was, it certainly had style, and a number of the tracks had that ...  Read the complete review

I'm writing this as I find when I trawl through the Bowie ops that no one has written a piece on Earthling. I find this rather staggering but then I was the first person to ever write an op on Outside, when Bowie, at his latest gig, described fans of Outside as being his core fans (though I wasn?t there, my mate told me). Earthling, I'm reliably informed, came about from Bowie's obsession with Trent Reznor aka Nine Inch Nails. I'm not a big NIN fan, I like Closer though the explicit lyrics perhaps detract from the song. Still, it seems about right that Bowie considers Reznor starting point. Bowie is experimenting with a harsher, some say Drum ...  Read the complete review

Taking yet another sharp turn in his career, Bowie turned his back on following up 1. Outside (with 2. Contamination) by treading down the Drum'n'Bass route instead. While the disc could have been an absolute nightmare, with the help of a couple of hit singles, the Thin White Duke has managed to maintain his credibility. Bowie also follows his 'song with a movie title' theme (that spawned Look Back In Anger) by composing 'Seven Years In Tibet'. ...  Read the complete review