Tonight Tonight! I'll See My Glove Tonight! And For Us The Stars Will Stop Where They Are!

Overall Album Score: 6.3 out of 10

Everybody on the Planet Earth says this album is awful. Me? Well ... for a Bowie album, it certainly isn't good. I could certainly fathom something much, much worse! But, putting aside everything that Bowie has done in the past, I don't think this album is all that bad. (Alright, I'll 'fess up. I trashed far better albums on this site ... I'm a fan! What do you expect?)

Okay, there are really only two good songs on here, which is the symphonic-n-sweeping "Loving the Alien," and, of course, there's "Blue Jean." And, do you know what the odd thing about these songs are? They are the only songs on the album that were solely penned by Bowie. All the other songs, he either borrowed from his collaboration with Iggy Pop, was co-written by Iggy Pop specifically for this album, or was a cover! That's interesting!

Not that I'm really using this as a defense for the temporarily-washed-up David Bowie! He's still responsible for accepting and using (and co-writing) some of the sub-par material on the album.

The only track that really fails in my book is "Don't Look Down" (an Iggy Pop song not written by Bowie). However apart from the covers "God Only Knows" and "I Keep Forgettin' " everything either borders on being dull or is just significantly misfired in some way or another.

(Yes. David Bowie is covering the Beach Boys classic "God Only Knows" from their untouchable Pet Sounds album. God only knows why Bowie decided to cover this! I'm sure many Beach Boys fans hated him for that ... but I'm pretty sure nobody could totally mess up that song if they put forth some effort. And Bowie doesn't really butcher it here.)

Probably Bowie's biggest mistake concerning this album was that he completely forgot about his mission as an "artist." He was too dazzled from the massive success of his Let's Dance album to think straight, I suppose.

A lot of his best work from the 1984-1987 period, oddly enough, happened on movie soundtracks. The track "Absolute Beginners," which he wrote for the 1985 film of the same name, is Bowie's second greatest disjoined love anthem and one of his most engaging songs ever (it loses out to "Heroes" of course)! Also, he wrote another disjointed love anthem entitled "As the World Falls Down," which appeared inside of a giant bubble on the 1986 film "Labyrinth." ... Nobody can forget about these little gems! If you're lucky enough to track down an old CD edition of this album, both of these songs will appear as bonus tracks.

Overall Album Score: 6.3 out of 10 (Eh..... it still passes. This is smack dab in the middle of Bowie's major artistic slump. But he still gets points for "Blue Jean" and "Loving the Alien." I sure wish that I could write those songs during one of MY artistic slumps.)

Average Song Score: 6.9 (Well ... there are two good songs on here, at least. They both would go quite fine on Bowie compilation albums, actually.)

Album Score: 6.0 (Apart from those two songs ... well ...)

Artist Rating: 6.0 (David Bowie the Sell-Out Part II.)

Track Reviews

Loving the Alien 10/10

This is one of the major favorite 80s decade Bowie compositions. It doesn't really beat out the 3 Kings from Let's Dance, but Loving the Alien has definite qualities of its own. It's a sprawling synth-symphonic 7-minute masterpiece that does not only have a lot of good hooks in it, but it is absolutely mesmerizing! He's probably one of the few artists who is able to do that consistently. (And I don't exactly have an attention span that normally allots attention during an entire 7-minute song! This is probably why I gave up classical music!) But this is one of those songs! Take it or leave it! But I choose to take it! (The music video of this song, by the way, is my favorite Bowie video ... I just like that guy playing the double bass in the cardboard costume! Other than that, there's no reason for this preference.)

Don't Look Down 3/10

OH FUDGEMONKEY! This track is exactly why it took me so long to start semi-liking this album. I would listen to "Loving the Alien" and be utterly amused by it. And then BAM the worst song on the album comes after that! I'm not going to call it quite as awful as "Ricochet" was from Let's Dance, but CRAP! This is a pretty worthless reggae-ish song. It wasn't even written by Bowie. (It was written by Iggy Pop and somebody else.) So what's the point! Let it screw up one of Iggy's albums! I don't care if he's your friend!

God Only Knows 8/10

...Okay, I myself don't fully forgive Bowie for covering one of the greatest songs in the history of rock and roll. And, you know, his tendency for covers has traditionally been to butcher them! He doesn't sound like he took to practicing singing this one, at least! But ... you know ... even under those circumstances, Bowie cannot and does not make this into a less-enjoyable song than it had the right to be in the first place.

Tonight 5/10

This song originally appeared on Iggy Pop's Lust For Life, and it wasn't even one of the best songs off of that album! It's not a wasteland-of-a-song, but it is totally non-exhilarating and even grows slightly tedious. And ... yep ... that's Tina Turner you're hearing in the background. I find it hard to believe that Bowie was able to convince the Tina Turner to be in one of his albums! And, now that he had gotten her to appear on this album, why the heck didn't he do something with it? Her vocal performance in the background is less-exhilarating than Bowie's vocals are most of the time.

Neighborhood Threat 6/10

This track also appeared originally on Iggy's Lust For Life album. I'm actually wondering why he didn't choose to cover "Lust For Life!" ...Eh, I guess that's such a classic song, Bowie decided not to touch it. He probably shouldn't have touched "Neighborhood Threat," either! He turns it into a typical-sounding 80s song and there's nothing too interesting here for us listeners to grasp onto. (Iggy's version is much more dramatic and menacing.)

Blue Jean 10/10

BLUE JEAN! ... When I first heard this song, I just couldn't get enough of it. It's a song about a guy absolutely desperate for this Blue Jean character. The song, which has a sort of mechanical beat to it, is utterly catchy and it has classsss. I also really enjoy Bowie's performance on this one. He certainly spent much more time on it than he apparently did for "God Only Knows!" (This must have been during Bowie's peak of his association with MTV. There's a really entertaining 20-minute short subject film associated with this song that is essentially about the 'story behind this song.' His sole Grammy award went to that film. It's not great, but Bowie does prove that he can be a funny performer. Heck! Bowie even tries slapstick all throughout this film, if you can believe that ... not always convincing at it, but it was entertaining watching him do it.)

Tumble and Twirl 7/10

Mmmmmmmmmmmm... Not bad. It's largely a dull 80s Bowie song, but at least it has the slightest injection of weirdness in it. And besides. There's a pretty darn good piece of melody in here. So me no complaino.

I Keep Forgettin' 7.5/10

I can't say where this song is from. But it wasn't written by Bowie or anything. (It's a cover from somebody.) It might be one of the catchier songs on the album. Though it's entirely unremarkable. Ummm...

Dancing With the Big Boys 6/10

Maybe one of the most fun collaborations that Bowie has ever done was the two albums he made with Iggy Pop in the late 70s. Here is another collaboration (with Iggy Pop singing some background vocals). Unfortunately, it's a far cry from those old days! It's not bad. It's just on the dull side. It probably would have been better had Bowie not taken it upon himself to embrace the 80s pop productions! (But such would be going against the guy's principles!)

Today the minutes seem like hours, the hours go so slowly, and the sky is light; the moon burns bright (...now where are the lunar firefighters when ya need 'em?) Leave your comments here!