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
- Cut Song: "Crystal Japan", a three-minute synthesizer instrumental, was originally intended to be the closing track on the album, only to be pulled in favor of "It's No Game (Part 2)"; it would later turn up in a Japandering commercial for Jun Rock Sake, being released there as an exclusive non-album single before reappearing as the B-Side to "Up the Hill Backwards". It would also appear as a bonus track on the 1992 Rykodisc reissue of the album and on the Re:Call 3 compilation included with the A New Career in a New Town [1977-1980] Boxed Set.
- Missing Episode: A track titled "Is There Life After Marriage?" was recorded during the album sessions, but was ultimately left on the cutting room floor. To this day, it has never resurfaced, and a purported leak of the track turned out to actually be the instrumental for a scrapped Cover Version of "I Feel Free" by Cream.
- Promoted Fanboy: Steve Strange and the Blitz Kids cameo in the "Ashes to Ashes" music video; Strange was a Bowie fanboy who fashioned the New Romantic movement's style partially off of Bowie's late 70's getup, and held "Bowie Night" events at the Blitz Club.
- Referenced by...:
- The Young Ones: In the episode "Nasty" the young ones conduct a funeral ceremony. As the vicar says "ashes to ashes" Rick sings "funk to funky, we know Major Tom's a junkie", in reference to "Ashes to Ashes".
- According to Michael Stipe, the lyrics to "The Great Beyond" were his attempt at writing an R.E.M. version of "Ashes to Ashes", trading out Major Tom and "Space Oddity" for Andy Kaufman and "Man on the Moon".
- The TV series Ashes to Ashes was named after the song "Ashes to Ashes" and features the music video's take on Pierrot as a recurring antagonist.
- "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" by Skrillex was named after this album.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run features a Stand named Scary Monsters, after the Bowie album and song.
- Refitted for Sequel:
- "Scream Like a Baby" is a reworking of "I Am A Laser", a track from an aborted Ava Cherry and the Astronettes album that Bowie co-wrote and produced just before the Diamond Dogs sessions began; the recordings for this scrapped record would eventually see a semi-official release in 1995 as People From Bad Homes.
- On the flipside, Bowie intended to include a Cover Version of "I Feel Free" by Cream on this album; an instrumental track for it was recorded, but nothing come of it past that... until 1993, when Bowie finally got around to completing a cover of the song on Black Tie White Noise.
- She Also Did: The Japanese female voice on "It's No Game" is Michi Hirota, who is one of the women on the cover of Sparks' Kimono My House.
- What Could Have Been:
- Bowie originally planned to support the album with a tour in 1981, likely on a far smaller scale than previous ventures given the number of commitments he was signed onto at the time. However, before the project could get out of the preliminary planning stages, Bowie chose to cancel it in the wake of John Lennon's murder in December of 1980 (Bowie was informed after the killing that he was No. 2 on the assassin's hitlist, and feared for his own safety as a result of that, retreating to Switzerland in the fallout).
- In an interview with Bowie biographer Nicholas Buckley, Adrian Belew, who'd previously played guitar on Lodger, revealed that he was asked to play on Scary Monsters as well, even being given an advance payment. Ultimately, to his surprise, Bowie opted to feature Belew's future King Crimson bandmate Robert Fripp (who'd previously played on "Heroes") instead.
- Tom Verlaine of Television was asked to play guitar on "Kingdom Come", a Cover Version of one of his own solo songs. Ultimately however, he was left off in favor of Robert Fripp, owed to Verlaine's indecisiveness over how he wanted his guitar to sound on Bowie's rendition.
- Working Title: Several, owed to Bowie's more calculated, methodical approach to the album (following the improvisational style of "Heroes" and Lodger).
- "Up the Hill Backwards" was first penned as "Cameras in Brooklyn".
- "Ashes to Ashes" was originally written with the title "People Turn to Gold".
- "Fashion" was developed under the name "Jamaica".
- "Teenage Wildlife" was initially called "It Happens Every Day".
Miscellaneous trivia:
- Presumably without neither Bowie nor RCA's knowledge, the earliest copies of the original record release in 1980 were pressed on purple vinyl (though some flash photographs show the vinyl appearing more cranberry-colored) rather than the standard black. It's not known exactly how many of these purple records were issued; rumors claim that the amount pressed ranges from well into the hundreds to just three.
- Because of how long it took for Rykodisc to reach this album in their reissue campaign of Bowie's RCA Records catalog, with it not hitting store shelves until 1992 (the other albums were reissued in 1990 and 1991), this was one of only three Bowie albums in Rykodisc's catalog to lack a SPARS code. The other two were the soundtrack to the Concert Film Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture (also released in 1992) and The Singles Collection (released in 1993). Trent Reznor commented on the long wait time in an interview that he and Bowie did to promote the dual-act Dissonance Tour.
