Heathen is the twenty-third studio album by David Bowie, released in 2002 through ISO & Columbia Records. The album reunites Bowie with longtime collaborator Tony Visconti for their first album together since 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). Visconti would go on to produce all of Bowie's subsequent albums up until his death.
Initially, Bowie had planned on releasing an album called Toy, which consisted mostly of re-recordings of his pre-Space Oddity material. However, the plan to release the album didn't come to fruition and the sessions led into the recording of Heathen insteadnote . Although it's claimed that all songs featured on the album were written before the attacks of September 11 2001, it is widely agreed the events had an influence on the album.
Sound-wise, the album continues the neoclassical brand of synth-heavy art rock that first appeared on 'hours...', but turns it in a more darker, brooding direction influenced not only by the September 11 attacks, but also Bowie's general anxieties about living in America as well as the success of Radiohead's similarly moody and electronic Kid A and Amnesiac earlier in the decade (Bowie himself was a fan of Radiohead).
Heathen peaked at 14 on the Billboard charts, becoming Bowie's highest-selling album in the country since Tonight in 1984. The singles from this album are "Slow Burn", "Everyone Says 'Hi'" and "I've Been Waiting for You". Notably, none of these singles were released with a music video; Bowie, who was 55 at the time of the album's release, came to feel as if he had become too old to remain relevant on television, and decided to refrain from the music video format as a result. A video for "Slow Burn" was shot in August of 2002 however, and eventually saw release
in 2011. Bowie would ultimately walk back on his statements and return to releasing music videos— all but two of which starred himself (and in the case of the second of those two he was only absent on account of being dead)— for his next (and last) three albumsnote .
Heathen is also notable for being one of only five albums in Bowie's discography (alongside Reality and reissues of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), and Let's Dance) to see release on the Super Audio CD format, with slightly longer versions of several songs plus four bonus tracks. Unlike the other four albums, this one only features a single Scarlet Book audio layer, with no Redbook audio layer, and as a result is the only one of the four Bowie SACDs to not be compatible with a standard CD player. To this day, the extended version of Heathen remains exclusive to the SACD release, with the extended songs and most of the bonus tracks not seeing further release on any reissues (despite the whole SACD version of the album being long enough to fit on a single Redbook-compliant Compact Disc uncut) or even compilations.
Not to be confused with the Bay Area Thrash Metal band.
Tracklist:
- "Sunday" (4:45)*
- "Cactus"note (2:55)
- "Slip Away" (6:05)*
- "Slow Burn" (4:41)*
- "Afraid" (3:28)
- "I've Been Waiting for You"note (3:00)*
- "I Would Be Your Slave" (5:14)
- "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship"note (4:04)
- "5:15 The Angels Have Gone" (5:00)*
- "Everyone Says 'Hi'" (3:59)
- "A Better Future" (4:11)
- "Heathen (The Rays)" (4:16)
SACD Bonus Tracks
- "When the Boys Come Marching Home" (4:49)
- "Wood Jackson" (4:44)
- "Conversation Piece"note (3:49)
- "Safe"note (5:53)
"Hark, who are we? So small in tropes such as these?"
- Album Title Drop: Averted with "Heathen (The Rays)".
- Concept Album: Generally believed to be one by fans and analysts. A recurring theme on the album is the decay of human society; among others, topics covered on Heathen include an imprisoned man spiraling into psychotic obsession, overly-nostalgic people retreating from the world around them in fear of modernity, a man mourning a failed relationship, and a boy processing the news of his father's death.
- Cover Version: Three of them pop up in this album, the latter two of which were originally intended for inclusion on the never-released Pin Ups sequel Bowie-ing Out:
- "Cactus" (The Pixies)
- "I've Been Waiting for You" (Neil Young)
- "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship" (The Legendary Stardust Cowboy)
- Creator Provincialism: "Slip Away" is deeply rooted in Bowie's adopted home of New York City. The main characters of Bones and Oogie were puppets on The Uncle Floyd Vivino Show, which was a huge deal in the tri-state area but fell apart when it attempted to go national. There's also a reference to the New York Yankees, although this is more accessible to the general public.
- Darker and Edgier: Compared to 'hours...', Heathen is much more dour in both lyrical and musical tone. While Bowie testified that the songs had been written before 9/11, he admitted that the nationwide mood afterwards affected the bleak tone of the final product (heightened by the fact that he lived in New York City).
- Disappeared Dad: "Everyone Says 'Hi'" is about a boy struggling to accept that his father had passed away, thinking his father was this instead; according to Bowie, the song was inspired by his mother's passing in 2001.Said you took a big trip. They said you moved away
Happened oh, so quietly. They say - Epic Rocking: The 6 minute "Slip Away". "Safe" on the SACD release comes close, being just seven seconds short of the 6-minute mark.
- Fading into the Next Song: "Slip Away" segues directly into "Slow Burn". Also, "5:15 the Angels Have Gone" segues directly into "Everyone Says 'Hi'", which in turn segues into "A Better Future".
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: The lines "and nothing has changed; everything has changed" in "Sunday".
- Monochromatic Eyes: Bowie is depicted with a pair of glowing, metallic eyes on the front cover; Bowie biographer Nicholas Pegg claims that the effect was intended to resemble a fish's eyes, alluding to the ichthys in first-century Christianity.
- Nostalgia Filter: The primary theme of "Slip Away".Down in space, it's always 1982.
- Real Life Writes the Plot:
- In an interview with The Daily Beast, Bowie stated that the album's broodingly introspective tone was influenced by his feelings working at Allaire Studios in Shokan. The studio was built on a mountaintop, and the surrounding rural environment was so overwhelmingly breathtaking that it put him in a reflective mood throughout production.
- Bowie stated that "Everyone Says 'Hi'" was inspired by his mother's death in 2001.
- Rearrange the Song:
- "Slip Away" (formerly "Uncle Floyd") and "Afraid" were initially recorded for Toy and are included in the version that leaked in 2011. Both songs were both re-recorded for Heathen, and consequently are omitted from the finalized 2021 release of Toy. While the two versions of each song sound fairly similar enough to one-another, "Slip Away" removes "Uncle Floyd"'s lengthy intro consisting of sampled audio from The Uncle Floyd Show, presumably due to copyright issues.
- On the SACD release, the bonus track "Conversation Piece" is a re-recording of a B-Side from 1970, specifically that for the original version of "The Prettiest Star" (which itself was re-recorded for Aladdin Sane nearly 30 years before this album). The original version of "Conversation Piece" would eventually be retroactively incorporated into Space Oddity for its 50th anniversary remix in 2019.
- Re-Cut: The SACD release features slightly longer versions of "Sunday", "Slip Away", "Slow Burn", "I've Been Waiting For You", and "5:15 The Angels Have Gone", which combined with the added bonus tracks pushes the album up to a total runtime of 71:08 (compared to the standard edition's 52:08).
- Religion Rant Song: "A Better Future" is a "Hate the God" variant, featuring Bowie threatening God that he'll stop believing in Him if He doesn't ensure, well, a better future for mankind.
- Rhyming Title: "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship".
- Sharp-Dressed Man: The album cover portrays him as this, although the Monochromatic Eyes do make him creepy.
- Shout-Out:
- "Sunday"— and by extension the album— opens with a stuttering synth riff that audibly recalls that of "Everything in Its Right Place", the opening track to Radiohead's Kid A. Bowie was a noted fan of the group.
- Carrying over from the Pixies' version, the D-A-V-I-D chant in the bridge of "Cactus" is a shout-out to a similar technique used by T. Rex (who Bowie had previously name-dropped in "All the Young Dudes", the song Bowie wrote for Mott the Hoople).
- Coney Island is name-dropped in "Slip Away", itself a tribute to The Uncle Floyd Show (an American variety show that ran from 1974 to 1998 and was
surprisingly popular among rock musicians). - The first pre-chorus of "Afraid" includes the line "I believe in Beatles," referencing the infamous line "I don't believe in Beatles" in John Lennon's solo song "God".
- "I Would Be Your Slave" does this for Labyrinth:
Jareth:"I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave."- "I Would Be Your Slave" also lyrically alludes to "Footprints in the Sand", a famous Christian allegorical poem depicting God carrying a man during the darkest moments in his life, represented by two trails of footprints on a beach occasionally turning into one.
- Yes, Ziggy Stardust was named in tribute to The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, who Bowie covered with "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship".
- Singer Namedrop: "Cactus" spells out "David" during the bridge.
- Special Guest:
- Lisa Germano provides violin parts throughout the album.
- Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater provides keyboard parts throughout the album.
- Kristeen Young provides both backing vocals and piano parts throughout the album.
- Tony Levin of King Crimson plays fretless bass on "Slip Away".
- Pete Townshend of The Who plays guitar on "Slow Burn".
- Dave Grohl plays guitar on "I've Been Waiting for You".
- Spelling Song: In "Cactus", the P-I-X-I-E-S chant in the bridge is changed to D-A-V-I-D.
- Studio Chatter: An unidentified voice giving a count-off can be faintly heard in the intro to "I Would Be Your Slave".
- Title Drop: Subverted with "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship"— the lyric in the song is "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spacecraft"
- Title Track: "Heathen (The Rays)".
