Week 93 | On Never Let Me Down 2018 (2018)

I’ve recently set off to listen to all of Bowie’s studio albums in order, not in one sitting but casually, over time.  I plan to comment on the experience later.  What kind of stopped me in my tracks is finally listening to Never Let Me Down 2018.  Amidst a flood of repackaged materials and live albums that have proliferated since Bowie’s death, this stands out as the freshest contribution since 2016’s Blackstar.

What is Never Let Me Down 2018?  It’s a project in which musicians, including long-time Bowie guitarist Reeves Gabrels and, at least on one song, Laurie Anderson, remixed the songs from 1987’s Never Let Me Down and recorded new instruments accompaniments to Bowie’s original vocals.  The result is an album that sounds so much better than the original that it sounds like a different album altogether.

This is a case where I would like to know more about music so I can better explain why this version sounds so much better than the original.  What I can explain is that the original sounds like Bowie was trying to make what he thought a late-80s hit album was supposed to sound like.  The distinctive feature of the album are synthesizers, but not in an innovative Low or Heroes way.  All that’s gone with the 2018 version, replaced by, what sounds like real musicians playing real instruments.

For a while, the original version of Never Let Me Down was frequently derided by critics and fans as Bowie’s worst album.  Over time, that designation has seemed to shift to its predecessor, Tonight.  I actually don’t think either album is as bad as all that, but I have thought that the original Never Let Me Down sounds better in pieces than as a complete work.  With the exception of the song, Time Will Crawl, the rest sounds like an album of filler songs.

I found listening to Never Let Me Down 2018 to be far more compelling— I wanted to hear it all the way through.  It will be thought to go back to the original.

Unfortunately, the album was only officially released as part of a box set that contains other albums that I already have.  Several months ago I ordered what I thought was a stand-alone copy but got what might have been a remastered version of the original.  It wasn’t until Gabrels, via Facebook, told me that the whole album was available on line did I find it and listen to it.  It seems prime to be released on its own.

Although the album was released in 2018, Bowie was at least aware of the project in life, and actually contributed in some way or another beyond his original vocals.  The new version of Time Will Crawl was included on Nothing Has Changed, the last Bowie compilation released before his death.

In a sense, this project is what the album Toy wanted to be (but in my opinion failed)— contemporary re-dos of bad old songs.  In the case of Toy, the remakes revealed that the problem is with the songs themselves— not so here.  These are decent songs that finally get their due.