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
- Channel Hop: After two albums on Philips Records and Mercury Records, this album was Bowie's first to be released through RCA Records, with whom he'd work for the next 11 years. The move came at the behest of Bowie's manager, Tony Defries, who felt that Mercury had shafted Bowie financially; Defries threatened to make Bowie turn in an intentionally bad album unless the label allowed their contract to expire. Mercury would also surrender their ownership of the material Bowie released under them once Defries cleared the musician's debts to the label.
- Cut Song: "Bombers" was recorded for the album, but was ultimately replaced with a Cover Version of Biff Rose's "Fill Your Heart". The song would eventually become a bonus track on the 1990 remaster.
- Life Imitates Art: The surreal line: "It's on America's tortured brow / that Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow" in "Life on Mars?" got real in the 1990s when a cow was discovered with a spot resembling the silhouette of Mickey Mouse. It could be seen
in Disney World, Florida. - Referenced by...:
- The band the Kooks named themselves after the song "Kooks." The Smiths also references the song in "Sheila Take a Bow" with the "throw the homework onto the fire" line.
- The Breakfast Club opens with a Title Card that quotes the lines "...and these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through..." from "Changes".
- Life on Mars was named after "Life on Mars?"
- The Killers referenced a line from "Queen Bitch" via the "now she's calling a cab" bit in "Mr. Brightside".
- Metallica interpolates a section of "Andy Warhol" just before the final verse on "Master of Puppets".
- In Shrek 2, a Cover Version of "Changes" by Butterfly Boucher (with Bowie himself on backing vocals) underscores the montage depicting Shrek's journey back to Far Far Away after taking the Happily Ever After potion.
- Milk uses "Queen Bitch" as the background music to a montage depicting the titular activist's mayoral campaign, highlighting Bowie's close connections to the LGBT community in the '70s.
- The Doctor Who story "The Waters of Mars" is set on Bowie Base One, an astronaut colony on Mars, alluding to "Life on Mars?"
- Screwed by the Network: RCA Records refused to give the album much in the way of promotion; sessions for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars had already commenced when it released, and the label felt that Bowie's change in image there would make it difficult to market both records in equal measure. The album failed to chart as a result, not achieving any commercial success until Bowie's mainstream breakthrough with Ziggy Stardust the following year.
- The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The album finished recording on August 9, 1971, but took until December 17 (just over eight months later) to see release, owed to Tony Defries needing to find a new label for Bowie after the expiration of his previous contract in June.
- Throw It In!: "The Bewlay Brothers" was a last-minute addition to the album — it was included so belatedly that it wasn't even demoed, highlighted by the audible stool creaks and breaths at the start.
- What Could Have Been:
- Mercury Records were willing to negotiate a new contract that would've been more favorable for Bowie after the spat over the cover art for The Man Who Sold the World, thus meaning that Hunky Dory (and by extent Bowie's later albums) could've been released through them. However, Bowie's manager, Tony Defries, allowed the Mercury contract to expire in June 1971 due to his discontent with the label's handling of Bowie, who Defries moved over to RCA Records in the fallout.
- As shown in the Boxed Set Divine Symmetry, Bowie signed to the publishing arm of Chrysalis Records on October 23, 1970, and he wrote the material for both this album and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars up to the end of 1971; the main label even pressed a test 7" of the demos that he recorded for Hunky Dory. Additionally, The Beatles' vanity label, Apple Records, manufactured a test pressing of the album itself for promotional purposes. However, Tony Defries' label-scouting would ultimately bring Bowie under the arm of RCA Records.
