David Bowie | Space Oddity | The Man Who Sold the World | Hunky Dory
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars | Aladdin Sane | Pin Ups | Diamond Dogs | Young Americans
Station to Station | Low | "Heroes" | Lodger | Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) | Let's Dance | Tonight | Never Let Me Down
Tin Machine | Black Tie White Noise | The Buddha of Suburbia | Outside | Earthling | 'hours...' | Heathen | Reality | 'hours...'
The Next Day | ★ | Changesonebowie
- Better Export for You:
- Initial Japanese CDs slot in one additional bonus track, the "Don't Stop Praying Mix" of "Pallas Athena", between the remix of "Jump They Say" and "Lucy Can't Dance".
- The Singaporean CD release adds in an Indonesian-language version of "Don't Let Me Down & Down".
- Channel Hop: After parting ways with EMI in 1990 over their distrust towards Tin Machine, Bowie signed onto Savage Records, an imprint of Arista Records, for this album; Arista co-distributed the album in most of the world. When Savage went under shortly after the album's release, Bowie fully moved over to Arista everywhere except the US, where he ultimately signed to EMI imprint Virgin Records in 1995.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: For a long time, this album was next-to-impossible to find in the US, as the album's distributor there, Savage Records, went bankrupt midway through its promotion cycle. The album would eventually be rescued when it saw reissues by EMI in 2003 and Parlophone Records in 2015 & 2021, but both omit the bonus tracks that were present on the original CD release to varying extentsnote .
- Reality Subtext:
- "Jump They Say" was inspired by Bowie's late half-brother Terry Burns, who had committed suicide in 1985.
- "You've Been Around" was written while Bowie was in Tin Machine; it is suggested that the song was also about the band.
- "The Wedding", "The Wedding Song" and "Miracle Goodnight" were written about his relationship and marriage to Iman.
- Refitted for Sequel: Covering Cream's "I Feel Free" was an idea that went all the way back to the Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) sessions. Bowie only got as far as recording an instrumental track back in 1980, but eventually revisited the idea for this album.
- Sequel Gap: The album was Bowie's first solo record since Never Let Me Down six years prior, owed to him choosing to work with Tin Machine during the interim as a means of artistically reinvigorating himself after a bout of Artist Disillusionmentnote .
- What Could Have Been:
- The album cover was originally intended to feature a headshot of Bowie, vertically mirrored down the middle, playing on the anisocoria that left one eye permanently dilated.
- "Night Flights" was intended to be released as the album's fourth single, but Arista Records scrapped the release after both the Title Track and "Miracle Goodnight" stiffed on the charts, just barely reaching the UK Top 40 compared to the No. 9 peak of "Jump They Say". That said, a mimed Performance Video did end up appearing in the Direct to Video documentary David Bowie: Black Tie White Noise, alongside similar clips for a number of other album cuts.
- Working Title:
- The Wedding Album was brought up as a potential name for the record before Bowie settled on Black Tie White Noise.
- As shown in the liner notes for the Boxed Set Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) and the standalone release of this album's 2021 remaster, "Jump They Say" was originally penned under the name "Jump".
