David Bowie just doesn't click with me for some reason. Why would he be worth listening to...

David Bowie just doesn't click with me for some reason. Why would he be worth listening to? He was certainly influential on a popular level (like Queen), but none of his ingenuity sticks with me for some reason. Pretty much everything that I've heard pre-Black Star sounds dated and, production-wise, inoffensive. His voice has the theatrical sound of Scott Walker, but it's far more grating. Which one of his works breaks any ground?

Scaruffi's write up:

>David Bowie turned marketing into the essence of his art. All great phenomena of popular music, from Elvis Presley to the Beatles, had been, first and foremost, marketing phenomena (just like Coca Cola and Barbie before them); however, Bowie turned that into an art of its own. With Bowie the science of marketing becomes art; art and marketing become one. There were intellectuals who had proclaimed this theory in rebellious terms. Bowie was, in many ways, the heir, no matter how perverted, of Andy Warhol's pop art and of the underground culture of the 1960s. He adopted some of the most blaspheme issues and turned them upside down to make them precisely what they had been designed to fight: a commodity.

>Bowie was a protagonist of his times, although a poor musician: to say that Bowie is a musician is like saying that Nero was a harp player (a fact that is technically true, but misleading). Bowie embodies the quintessence of artificial art, raises futulity to paradigm, focuses on the phenomenon rather than the content, makes irrelevant the relevant, and, thus, is the epitome of everything that went wrong with rock music.

cont.

>Each element of his art is the emblem of a true artistic movement; however, the ensemble of those emblems constitutes no more than a puzzle, no matter how intriguing, of symbols, a roll of incoherent images projected against the wall at twice the speed, a dictionary of terms rather than a poem, and, in the best of hypotheses, a documentary of the cultural fads of his era.

>Reading the chronicles of his times, it is clear that what caused sensation was the show, not the music. The show that Bowie set up was undoubtedly in sync with the avantgarde, as it fused theater, mime, cinema, visual art, literature and music. However, Bowie merely recycled what had been going on for years in the British underground, in particular what had been popularized by the psychedelic bands of 1967. And he turned it into a commodity: whichever way you look at his oeuvre, this is the real merit of it.

>Surprisingly, he resurrected his career in the 1990s with a trio of experimental works that suddenly showed he had become a musician, not just the pretense of being a musician.

Pretentious pop music, the most overrated album of the year for sure.

>thinking music can be dated
>trying to approach what music you 'should' enjoy from some objective level
>citing scaruffi

I like David Bowie on a musical level, but I think his lyrics dont really resonate with me.
Talking Heads have songs with lyrics that have a similar style but i prefer talking heads

>thinking music can be dated

shouldn't be a contentious issue. but, he definitely has that sparkling clean 70's production (like ELO).

>trying to approach what music you 'should' enjoy from some objective level

yes, subjectively I don't like wasting time with music that I don't find to be intriguing. objectively, there is something to be said for ingenuity. And as scaruffi postulated, his ingenuity appears to have little to do with the music and more to do with the phenomena.

>citing scaruffi

why not? he's a smart guy and historian who has (supposedly) listened to a lot of music and points out historically unique music.

That Scaruffi peice is the most contrarian "You-don't-get-it-but-I-do" shit I've seen in some time.

That last line gets me:
>The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters, and Lets Dance
Pretentious shit pretending to be real music

>Black Tie White Noise (?), Outside, Earthling, Hours, and The Buddha of Suburbia(?)
REAL, EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC

>unironical Scaruffi-posting
How new do you have to be to follow the overwritten, willfully ignorant opinions of this pompous meme master? This man, he's a joke.

you have literally 43 seconds to suggest better critics

Believe me, I know how you feel, I went through his discog in order and every release dissapointed me, then I got to Ziggy and I fell in love. Instantly became a classic to me. Then more dissapointments up unil Young Americans.

Bowie is a genuis, but he has better moments, and I've found a fair few of his albums are growers. Stick with an album you don't think sounds dated and keep coming back to it.

none, there is no reason for critics anymore, get your own opinions

My rateyourmusic-account
stereogum
Tiny mixtapes

Wow that was easy! And now don't say these are shit because Scaruffi literally listened to music for years through two dollar headphones.

because you listened to talking heads first

Bowie's music is pretty boring desu, and he just liked to jump on what ever trend was popular at the time.

Low sounds dated cause when he was doing those drum and synth sounds he was trying to sound like Kraftwerk, Harmonia, and Cluster. but then when it came out everyone was trying to do drums like that, leading to the 80s sound of pop production. it's the "seinfeld" effect

>Low sounds dated

Low sounds like it could have come out next year.

Honestly, I get it, but I think it's just that it doesn't resonate with some people. The theatricality can be put-down as "OH ALL IT IS IS IMAGE," as Scaruffi (Who I generally respect) seems to think, but a lot of it is breaking down barriers and adding emotion, flow, and grandiosity to the music rather than just bare composition or the boring old 50's vamp and the like.

If you love theatrics, you'll love Bowie. If you love odd interpretation of the sounds of the time, you'll love Bowie. If you love artistic riffs on popular music, you'll love Bowie. If you don't get it, you just don't.

Also, again, while I usually agree with Scaruffi or see where he's coming from, he's dead wrong on Bowie. He used production as a tool, both on himself and other artists, and he was quite a musician. He recognized talent well and utilized great session players, but a lot of his most famous or loved sounds were just him and people often didn't realize it. Dude played a ton of instruments. And a lot of the time, he intentionally just made it blend; there's a lot of great instrumental work throughout his career that's entirely overlooked because it blends so well.

>Pic semi-related

>Dude played a ton of instruments.

For real. One of my favorite images of Bowie is of him casually touring with Iggy Pop as a keyboardist. It's as if you were going to see Bon Iver and Yeezy was in the background working the drum machine.

Fucking seriously. There's a couple videos of them playing that tour, it's insane. I remember seeing a full list of the instruments he played, it was ridiculous, at least 10, if I recall.

Friendly reminder he did all the guitar on Diamond Dogs.

THEY CALL THEM THE DIAMOND DOGS

Not to knock Bowie but he's an absolute and utter amateur at most instruments. He can play the piano serviceably and his sax skills are moderate but the rest is just very basic. It was more about how collaborations and his ideas anyways.

You. Decide for yourself.

If you want to know why so many people are fascinated by him you'll find a different answer from each person.

Out of all of his albums, I've heard arguments made for each of them being someone's favorite album of all time. Aside from Never Let Me Down. That album is complete shit.

I think Young Americans is an underrated classic. He invented a new sub genre for it(Plastic soul), and it goes underutilized in music culture.

I think the central phrase of his work is "Who Can I Be Now?". He was always experimenting: with different genres, with theatricality, with different people. Reminder that he never became a star because his music was popular (outside of Britain), but because he played one on the stage.