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...' | The Next Day | ★
Changesonebowie
- Alternative Character Interpretation
- "Uncle Arthur," on its surface, is a story-song that pokes fun at a stock Momma's Boy character. Some, however, see Arthur's "confirmed bachelor" status, and his belated (by the era's standards) marriage which lasts only a few days, as a coded reference to homosexuality. Also, that the protagonist is called "Uncle" throughout suggests that the song's events are from the viewpoint of a young child. Therefore, in this reading, his wife Sally's inability to cook may simply be a "child-friendly" (again, by the era's standards) cover story for the real reason the marriage failed.
- "Little Bombardier": Is Frankie Mear, the lonely veteran who befriends young children until the police warn him to lay off, actually a pedophile, or an innocent man caught up in a Pedo Hunt?
- Audience-Alienating Premise: AllMusic reviewer Dave Thompson considers
this the reason for the commercial failure of Bowie's Deram recordings:He was, at this time, targeting most of his energy directly into the heart of the Hip Easy Listening Intelligentsia — without pausing to wonder whether that crowd actually existed. Of course it didn't, and Bowie was doomed before he got started. [The music was t]oo twee for mainstream rock tastes, and way too heavy for the Anthony Newley crowd. - Broken Base: Critics and fans alike are divided over the merits of Bowie's debut album. Some consider it a bizarre, unlistenable mishmash of styles they feel he wasn't suited to, or simply pretend it doesn't exist. Others feel the Deram recordings at the least have Narm Charm, and contain the seeds of recurring themes in Bowie's mature work: Dystopia and messianism in "We Are Hungry Men," gender-bending in "She's Got Medals." And some consider the more mainstream pop songs ("Love You till Tuesday," "Sell Me a Coat," "When I Live My Dream") enjoyable listening in their own right.
- Misblamed: Some critics and biographers have pinned the responsibility for the album's commercial failure on Bowie's then-manager Kenneth Pitt whom, they claim, felt Bowie should be an "all-round entertainer" with broad mainstream appeal, instead of a rock musician. However, as Nicholas Pegg points out in The Complete David Bowie, Pitt's involvement with Bowie at the time was purely "administrative," and indeed he wasn't even in the U.K. during most of the writing and recording process. It was solely Bowie's decision to pursue a new musical direction after the failure of his early rock singles. Furthermore, not only did Bowie compose all the songs on his debut album and associated singles himself; he even, with his friend Dek Fearnley, handled all the arrangements.
- Memetic Mutation: The Laughing Gnome.
- Sweetness Aversion: "Love You till Tuesday": The nasal tone of voice, the rhyme of "branch" with "romance". Even The Stinger at the end of the song is Narmy.
- Values Dissonance: "We Are Hungry Men"'s framing of abortion as selfish infanticide may have been a reasonable (if extreme) stance to take in 1967, but would have basically no chance to fly today thanks to modern society's more open-minded attitudes towards abortion and childbearing in general.
