What are some songs that your average bowie fan really likes but probably won't appeal to the general public? I can think of "Teenage Wildlife" and "Strangers When We Meet" as good examples. And you?

It was a dream
We live inside a dream

-Agent Phillip Jefferies

I think "Station to Station" — for anyone else, it's too long, lyrics don't make sense, blah, blah, blah . . . for us, though, it's a masterpiece.

Otherwise, "Repetition."

Don’t think about Young Americans as a makeout album

Lodger album.

>>pretty cool, huh?

I think Strangers When We Meet has a lot of potential for mass appeal, like if it were used on a soundtrack to a movie that people acutally saw. Teenage Wildlife would be high on the list, though; it's one of those songs that I sometimes wonder why I like so damn much, which I guess is a pretty good criteria for this question.

I'd say something like Shake It or Fill Your Heart, but for some reason even most Bowie fans don't like those songs. And before you say that the reason is that those songs suck, let me pre-empt you by saying that it is, in fact, YOU who suck because those songs are great in their own little way.

So, hmm... Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud?

The beat is fat; the rhyme is obese

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What are some songs that your average bowie fan really likes but probably won't appeal to the general public?

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Good thread

Although not a song per se, I would say the general public would not like nor understand Future Legend and of course we all adore it and most probably the whole of the Outside album.



London Bye Ta-Ta...

Joe The Lion, S2S, Up The Hill Backwards, oh hell 90% of everything he has ever made.



I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain.

We Are The Dead, Width Of A Circle, Cygnet Committee, It's No Game (2), Lady Grinning Soul, Sons Of The Silent Age, Bewlay Brothers, Quicksand. All in no particular order.........

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oh hell 90% of everything he has ever made

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That just about sums it up

I must ask a member of the general public one day what it is about Let's Dance that appeals to them?



London Bye Ta-Ta...

Well in 1983 it was a very contempory sounding record, with very accessible singles released from it, still wth enough Bowie to tempt the older fans too. Top that with three really engaging videos (ok Modern love was just live footage, but it had a certain something) followed by a phenomenal tour.

It was to Scary monsters, what Young Americans was to Diamond dogs. A radical change of direction, one aimed at breaking the American market. Bowie was in a similar position again, he needed a major hit album, so he soaked up what was going on around him and gave the public exactly what they wanted. Not the most artistic of intentions but neccessary nonetheless.
I fly to the nearest bar

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1983

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Yeah, it very much captured the moment, in a way Bowie really hadn't (in this part of the world, at least) since his breakthrough with Ziggy.

The "mass" appeal of Let's Dance was quite short lived though. Once it left the charts, it never re-entered as far as I know, and sold poorly on re-release too.

The albums in Bowie's catalogue that have genuine longlasting mass appeal are Ziggy and Hunky Dory.

Slan libh,

Dara

"There are Irish people all over the world. Or people who want to be."