Best and Worst Song From Every Bowie Album (Part 1: 1967-1974)

This is another meaningless list that captures how I feel at a particular point in time, but for me it’s an amusing exercise. The trick here is that with many Bowie albums, there are no bad songs, so the choice between best and worst is not between good and bad. For purposes of this exercise, I’m including only studio albums in which Bowie is identified as the main artist, with the exceptions of the two Tin Machine albums and the Labyrinth soundtrack, all of which I’m including. I’m also including Toy using the official 2021 release date as opposed to the date years earlier when it was recorded. That said, here it goes…

David Bowie (1967). Unlike most Bowie albums, this song has almost all songs that are not only bad, but to my taste, almost unlistenable. Both best and worst are a challenge because all these songs are almost equally bad. I have only listened to this album through once or twice. That said, so as not to stumble out of the gate, I’ll choose “When I Live My Dream” as the best song on the album. It’s a song I hardly noticed until Heathrow Airport used it as part of an advertisement and Seu Jorge covered it in Portuguese. It’s not a great song, but it’s not as horrible as most of the rest of the album. As for the worst? It’s a toss up, but I’ll settle on, “Please Mr. Gravedigger,” a kind of horror novelty song, if there is such a thing. Un-melodic, forgettable and not quite up to Dr. Demento’s standards.

Space Oddity (1969). Bowie was so dissatisfied with his first album, that he originally gave his second the exact same name, perhaps in an attempt to erase the past. Though he didn’t succeed, this second album is much, much better. It’s hard not to name “Space Oddity” as the album’s best. It was Bowie’s first hit (of sorts) and was distinctive enough for the album to adopt its name by 1972, and that’s the name it’s retained ever since. So the best song is easy. Actually, for me the worst is too, that would be the juvenile “Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud.” Not nearly as bad as anything from the 1967 David Bowie, but it’s a spiritual first cousins. Bowie had moved far beyond with most of the rest of the ablbum.

The Man Who Sold the World (1970). Not as easy as it might seem at first, I guess I have to select the title track as the album’s best. It certainly has the longest legs. But there’s a lot of good stuff here and for me, it’s fascinating that much of the album is Bowie experimenting with heavy metal at the dawn of that genre. The worst is the unsubtle “Running Gun Blues.” Bowie had not yet made the album with only good songs.

Hunky Dory (1971). For an album that includes “Changes,” “Life on Mars” and many other staggeringly great songs, I nonetheless find “Queen Bitch” to stand apart as the best. I recently wrote about this, one of my favorite songs, so I won’t add much here, but it’s the best among many greats. That said, not every song on Hunky Dory is great, and I’m going to say the happy-go-lucky “Fill Your Heart” is the low point. Bowie didn’t even write it — its a cover of a song written by Biff Rose, whom wrote another song Bowie covered, “Buzz the Fuzz,” which is a strong contender for Bowie’s worst, and Paul “Dr. Zaius“ Williams. Actually, it’s not a terrible song, but it seems really out of place on the same album as “Quicksand” and “The Bewlay Brothers.”

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972). OK, here we have the first Bowie album with all songs that range from very good to works of staggering genius. It’s really hard to pick a best, but on this day I’m going to go with “Ziggy Stardust.” Most importantly, I like the sound, but also, “Ziggy” was Bowie’s most impactful personae. The worst is not remotely bad, but “It Ain’t Easy” seems misplaced. A good song, well performed, but it doesn’t have anything remotely connected to the rest of the album, so…

Aladdin Sane (1973). “Panic in Detroit” is easily one of my favorite songs and certainly my favorite on this strong album. The worst is Bowie’s cover of “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” While The Rolling Stones tried to offer a very skimpy fig leaf of ambiguity to the song, Bowie chose to perform it with maximum sleaze affect and he added an unnecessary spoken word part to erase any possible confusion of what this song is about, if indeed it was possible to be confused about that… and no, I didn’t think so either…

Pin Ups (1973). Bowie’s album of all cover songs, I’m going to say I like “See Emily Play” best. All of these songs are well performed with Bowie putting his glam-stamp on each, but none of them is truly his. As for the worst? That’s hard, but for lack of a clear stinker, I’m going to go with “I Wish You Would.” Not bad, but I had to pick something.

Diamond Dogs (1974). The last of Bowie’s glam albums, this is one of my favorites. While “Rebel Rebel” is surely Bowie’s bets known from this collection, my favorite, and what I’m going to call the best song is “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)”, which the album itself seems to think it three songs, but is actually one. Nowhere has Bowie painted a more vivid picture of the distopic future that seemed to plague his nightmares for his entire career, and its hard for me to think of another song where he put his lyric-writing skills and indeed his voice to work like he did here. As for the worst? I’m not going to count “Future Legend” or “Chant of the Every Circling Skeletal Family” as songs, because they aren’t, so I’ll say “Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me” is the worst again, not because it’s bad but it seems out of place on an album that otherwise is an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. Orwell rock ‘n’ rolled with nobody.

… To be continued…