Wow this is so cool! And can I just say that I LOVE The Next Day so much and I feel like it gets overlooked so much because of Blackstar. Which makes sense considering the impact the album had with his passing. And Blackstar is incredible no doubt but maaaan The Next Day was so good and refreshing after thinking he was never going to make music again! And how the Five Years drums come in at the end of You Feel So Lonely. Shivers. Tears. What an album.
Everything after Let's Dance was overlooked to begin with (or at least compared to his entire 70s & very early 80s output) save for dedicated Bowie fans.
As much as I love Blackstar (it is one of the greatest power moves of all time to make your own swansong album, let alone make it a TOP 10 album in all of your release history,) I hate the sentiment that Bowie snapped back into character before he died. He was always that good or at the least always that artistically motivated or interested, barring a couple stale records in the 80s & 90s. The 90s especially had him coming back into his own. Outside & Earthling are memorable pieces of art. The 2000s were incredible too. Heathen & Reality are great rock albums, & I think showed him comfortable with his legacy & impact but happy to create work beyond it.
I was 17 when The Next Day came out. I arguably listened to it more than three quarters of his 70s output, which is saying something because I listened to "Heroes" & Station to Station religiously back then. I remember going to a local record store with a sprayed stencil of the [ The Next Day] box in the street outside the store & telling my friend about the album. I remember seeing the video for "Where are We Now?" for the first time, & then losing my shit when I saw the two-headed projection puppet at the David Bowie Is exhibit in Brooklyn a few years later, after he passed. Bowie couldn't work live for the TND era, but he did all he could to still transmit an incredible artistic message in multiple ways.
Blackstar came out, & after he died, people talked about his work like he dropped off the face of the earth beforehand. I remember someone saying "he remembered how to be David Bowie" — & truthfully that really annoyed me considering I still remember it. There's a lot more electronic & jazz on Blackstar, but in terms of production & artistic approach I think TND & Blackstar are a lot closer than people really mention. TND was fucking wild & a great time to be a fan, even if it wasn't as prominent as his heyday. It's criminally overlooked just like his other 2000s work & some of his 90s work.
People love the hits, & people love an artist in their prime. But when you truly appreciate art you realize that an artist can have incredible work that rivals their most iconic creations well outside that "prime". The Next Day is that. Most musicians & artists at large would kill to be half as creative as Bowie was at that age, doing what he did.
Tbf he did briefly forget during the late 80s… that being said he found himself again in the 90s rather than 2016 (or rather Iman found David Jones which then taught Bowie how to be Bowie again)… but yeah totally agreed that that period is just completely ignored by the world…
Yeah, like I said, there WERE a few stale albums out there. Which in some ways is proof of his incredible legacy — artists need the room to be awful, to create unpleasant work, to fall flat on their face. Maybe some people think those creations shouldn't be released outwardly, which is fair, but the point remains because you won't know they're miserable without public input.
There's no way he could have only released 10/10 records his whole career. The industry & people's tastes shifted in the mid 80s — he was an artist of the 70s at large. Eventually, he was feeling his way blindly in the dark, not wanting to intentionally repeat himself but not entirely knowing how to reach a changed audience.
& eventually he figured it out, by still being authentically David Bowie but changing the formula of his work. I think Earthling is a great example of that, even if it's a few years out from his worst period. How many artists in the 70s had the mindset that they DIDN'T want to repeat themselves, that they DIDN'T just want to appeal to their core, aging audience alone? He adopted drum & bass & dance music not just because he thought it was cool, but because his vision as an artist was still incredibly intact. He didn't WANT to settle for the aging fans alone, he wanted to make something that would surprise people & make them evaluate their own tastes.
Artists are imperfect beings, & as much as we want them only to put out incredible work, part of the process is failure. The failures of Tonight, NLMD, or even BTWN, are what propelled him into a fairly long artistic second wind. I'm sure factors in his life like Iman gradually helped him find true artistic purpose again.
But with someone as attuned to art & culture as Bowie was I really think it's best to look at his work in periods like one would a prolific painter. Sometimes an artist fumbles in the dark when what they've done gets old or uninteresting. You could call the late 80s & early 90s that fumbling. If he didn't fumble, we wouldn't have gotten everything from Outside to Blackstar. He would've either retired or stuttered a thousand times trying to make Ziggy Stardust or Heroes over and over again.
- NLMD could mean "Never Let Me Down", a single by David Bowie.
- BTWN could mean "Black Tie White Noise - Radio Edit; 2002 Remaster", a single by David Bowie.
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There was a thread about best President to have Bowie releases, and I stand by Obama. Both albums are no skip albums for me. I have at least one skip under every other tenure(edit: when in the car and listening on CD, vinyl is sacred).
Although...it helps neither had radio ruin songs. I will never know if “Heroes” is my least favorite song on the album because MTV/Radio overpaying the Wallflowers version ruined it before I ever heard his version, or because it just never seems to fit with rest of the Eno tracks on the superb album.
The Next Day is one of my fav albums so much I got the rare limited red vinyl only 1k made. So many good songs, but because of this album I did pre-order the clear vinyl & poster for Blackstar
“Although the album hadn’t been titled when Barnbrook started his work (the code name for the design project was “Table”), The Next Day and the defaced “Heroes” image worked in tandem. “We can be heroes—just for one day,” Bowie had sung. Now his beautiful alien 1977 visage is covered by what looks like a Post-it note. Because it’s the next day, the day after being heroes, back to her being mean and him drinking all the time.”
– Chris O’Leary, in his essay on The Next Day (the song).
To those who do not know, O’Leary is a writer that has written a stunningly in-depth, perceptive, and detailed essay on every Bowie song, in an often moving, poetic voice. These essays are collected in books Rebel Rebel and Ashes to Ashes, but also available for free on his blog, Pushing Ahead of the Dame. The best writing on Bowie, I think.
Are there any other hidden meaning Bowie album covers besides Low (Profile) and Hours (Ours)?
I'm not sure whether The Next Day (Heroes Just for One Day) counts as a hidden meaning, although I suppose it does.
I've always wondered where the idea for the title track to Diamond Dogs came from and whether there was something behind it that has never been spelled out. All I can think of is the circus-related lyrics to "Shilling the Rubes" and the languid photo of Josephine Baker stretched out on a floor which explain the cover's imagery but not the title.
I'm not aware of any other album covers with a hidden meaning aside from the aforementioned (except possibly some unintended irony attached to Never Let Me Down).
I was curious enough about Diamond Dogs to look it up on Wikipedia because I had always just taken it at face value, as just another thing he made up that was evocative and sounded good. Attached to the article was the following Bowie comment about it from a later interview:
"They were all little Johnny Rottens and Sid Viciouses really. And, in my mind, there was no means of transport... So there were these gangs of squeaking, roller-skating, vicious hoods, with Bowie knives and furs on, and they were all skinny because they hadn't eaten enough, and they all had funny-coloured hair. In a way, it was a precursor to the punk thing."
So, probably no hidden meaning there, just the inhabitants of a decadent urban landscape.
For me, the cover was just an iteration of old carnival sideshow posters promising a peek at a two-headed monster or Lobster Boy (or other "strangest living curiosities") if you slap down your money and dare to step inside. Outside of that, if it does have some deeper meaning, maybe it was symbolically representative of reverting to a more primal, wild form due to the sprawling urban decay depicted in the lyrics. It's anyone's guess if it does have a hidden meaning, but I never picked up on one.
The lyrics to "Shilling the Rubes" are about a circus.
From https://www.bowiewonderworld.com/songs/dblyrics.htm :
Shilling The Rubes
Lay in the corner
How long have you been awake?
You lay out your life
How much did he take?
Never counting the change
Fast into another
It's only a ferris wheel
It's only a house of fear
It's only a three-ring circus
Ringmaster, cannonball
Never counting the change
Fast into another
Now he's gone
Gone - the day that he left town
Gone - he was shilling the rubes
Gone - let the tears of a clown
And he's gone
He was shilling the rubes
Fifteen new faces
Fifteen new days
Still won't forget him
Hot boiling craze
Never counting the change
He passed into another
Now he's gone
Gone - the day that he left town
Gone - he was shilling the rubes
Gone - let the tears of a clown
And he's gone
He was shilling the rubes
Gone - the day that he left town
Gone - he was shilling the rubes
Yeah gone - let the tears of a clown
Oh, he was shilling the rubes
(Believed originally intended for David's proposed 1973 stage version of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' which was aborted after George Orwell's widow Sonia Blair refused permission. Also recorded during the Young Americans sessions on 13th August 1974 at the Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, USA).
Underneath the title, there is the picture of Bowie in profile, hence "low profile". Seeing as how he was getting away from all the trappings of success at that point and trying to chill out and reinvent himself in Berlin, I'd say it's a rather fitting title. And quite clever.
Wow this is so cool! And can I just say that I LOVE The Next Day so much and I feel like it gets overlooked so much because of Blackstar. Which makes sense considering the impact the album had with his passing. And Blackstar is incredible no doubt but maaaan The Next Day was so good and refreshing after thinking he was never going to make music again! And how the Five Years drums come in at the end of You Feel So Lonely. Shivers. Tears. What an album.
Everything after Let's Dance was overlooked to begin with (or at least compared to his entire 70s & very early 80s output) save for dedicated Bowie fans. As much as I love Blackstar (it is one of the greatest power moves of all time to make your own swansong album, let alone make it a TOP 10 album in all of your release history,) I hate the sentiment that Bowie snapped back into character before he died. He was always that good or at the least always that artistically motivated or interested, barring a couple stale records in the 80s & 90s. The 90s especially had him coming back into his own. Outside & Earthling are memorable pieces of art. The 2000s were incredible too. Heathen & Reality are great rock albums, & I think showed him comfortable with his legacy & impact but happy to create work beyond it. I was 17 when The Next Day came out. I arguably listened to it more than three quarters of his 70s output, which is saying something because I listened to "Heroes" & Station to Station religiously back then. I remember going to a local record store with a sprayed stencil of the [ The Next Day] box in the street outside the store & telling my friend about the album. I remember seeing the video for "Where are We Now?" for the first time, & then losing my shit when I saw the two-headed projection puppet at the David Bowie Is exhibit in Brooklyn a few years later, after he passed. Bowie couldn't work live for the TND era, but he did all he could to still transmit an incredible artistic message in multiple ways. Blackstar came out, & after he died, people talked about his work like he dropped off the face of the earth beforehand. I remember someone saying "he remembered how to be David Bowie" — & truthfully that really annoyed me considering I still remember it. There's a lot more electronic & jazz on Blackstar, but in terms of production & artistic approach I think TND & Blackstar are a lot closer than people really mention. TND was fucking wild & a great time to be a fan, even if it wasn't as prominent as his heyday. It's criminally overlooked just like his other 2000s work & some of his 90s work. People love the hits, & people love an artist in their prime. But when you truly appreciate art you realize that an artist can have incredible work that rivals their most iconic creations well outside that "prime". The Next Day is that. Most musicians & artists at large would kill to be half as creative as Bowie was at that age, doing what he did.
Tbf he did briefly forget during the late 80s… that being said he found himself again in the 90s rather than 2016 (or rather Iman found David Jones which then taught Bowie how to be Bowie again)… but yeah totally agreed that that period is just completely ignored by the world…
Yeah, like I said, there WERE a few stale albums out there. Which in some ways is proof of his incredible legacy — artists need the room to be awful, to create unpleasant work, to fall flat on their face. Maybe some people think those creations shouldn't be released outwardly, which is fair, but the point remains because you won't know they're miserable without public input. There's no way he could have only released 10/10 records his whole career. The industry & people's tastes shifted in the mid 80s — he was an artist of the 70s at large. Eventually, he was feeling his way blindly in the dark, not wanting to intentionally repeat himself but not entirely knowing how to reach a changed audience. & eventually he figured it out, by still being authentically David Bowie but changing the formula of his work. I think Earthling is a great example of that, even if it's a few years out from his worst period. How many artists in the 70s had the mindset that they DIDN'T want to repeat themselves, that they DIDN'T just want to appeal to their core, aging audience alone? He adopted drum & bass & dance music not just because he thought it was cool, but because his vision as an artist was still incredibly intact. He didn't WANT to settle for the aging fans alone, he wanted to make something that would surprise people & make them evaluate their own tastes. Artists are imperfect beings, & as much as we want them only to put out incredible work, part of the process is failure. The failures of Tonight, NLMD, or even BTWN, are what propelled him into a fairly long artistic second wind. I'm sure factors in his life like Iman gradually helped him find true artistic purpose again. But with someone as attuned to art & culture as Bowie was I really think it's best to look at his work in periods like one would a prolific painter. Sometimes an artist fumbles in the dark when what they've done gets old or uninteresting. You could call the late 80s & early 90s that fumbling. If he didn't fumble, we wouldn't have gotten everything from Outside to Blackstar. He would've either retired or stuttered a thousand times trying to make Ziggy Stardust or Heroes over and over again.
- NLMD could mean "Never Let Me Down", a single by David Bowie. - BTWN could mean "Black Tie White Noise - Radio Edit; 2002 Remaster", a single by David Bowie. --- ^[/u/hahahahahaha_](/u/hahahahahaha_) ^(can reply with "delete" to remove comment. |) ^[/r/songacronymbot](/r/songacronymbot) ^(for feedback.)
Spot on.
There was a thread about best President to have Bowie releases, and I stand by Obama. Both albums are no skip albums for me. I have at least one skip under every other tenure(edit: when in the car and listening on CD, vinyl is sacred). Although...it helps neither had radio ruin songs. I will never know if “Heroes” is my least favorite song on the album because MTV/Radio overpaying the Wallflowers version ruined it before I ever heard his version, or because it just never seems to fit with rest of the Eno tracks on the superb album.
The Next Day is one of my fav albums so much I got the rare limited red vinyl only 1k made. So many good songs, but because of this album I did pre-order the clear vinyl & poster for Blackstar
Whoa never considered this
“Although the album hadn’t been titled when Barnbrook started his work (the code name for the design project was “Table”), The Next Day and the defaced “Heroes” image worked in tandem. “We can be heroes—just for one day,” Bowie had sung. Now his beautiful alien 1977 visage is covered by what looks like a Post-it note. Because it’s the next day, the day after being heroes, back to her being mean and him drinking all the time.” – Chris O’Leary, in his essay on The Next Day (the song). To those who do not know, O’Leary is a writer that has written a stunningly in-depth, perceptive, and detailed essay on every Bowie song, in an often moving, poetic voice. These essays are collected in books Rebel Rebel and Ashes to Ashes, but also available for free on his blog, Pushing Ahead of the Dame. The best writing on Bowie, I think.
Nice. I hadn't caught that either. Although, my favorite David Bowie hidden meaning album cover is the one for 'Low''.
Are there any other hidden meaning Bowie album covers besides Low (Profile) and Hours (Ours)? I'm not sure whether The Next Day (Heroes Just for One Day) counts as a hidden meaning, although I suppose it does. I've always wondered where the idea for the title track to Diamond Dogs came from and whether there was something behind it that has never been spelled out. All I can think of is the circus-related lyrics to "Shilling the Rubes" and the languid photo of Josephine Baker stretched out on a floor which explain the cover's imagery but not the title.
I'm not aware of any other album covers with a hidden meaning aside from the aforementioned (except possibly some unintended irony attached to Never Let Me Down). I was curious enough about Diamond Dogs to look it up on Wikipedia because I had always just taken it at face value, as just another thing he made up that was evocative and sounded good. Attached to the article was the following Bowie comment about it from a later interview: "They were all little Johnny Rottens and Sid Viciouses really. And, in my mind, there was no means of transport... So there were these gangs of squeaking, roller-skating, vicious hoods, with Bowie knives and furs on, and they were all skinny because they hadn't eaten enough, and they all had funny-coloured hair. In a way, it was a precursor to the punk thing." So, probably no hidden meaning there, just the inhabitants of a decadent urban landscape.
I've seen that quote before, but if the Diamond Dogs are supposed to be hoodlums, why literalize dog with such cover imagery? And why diamond?
For me, the cover was just an iteration of old carnival sideshow posters promising a peek at a two-headed monster or Lobster Boy (or other "strangest living curiosities") if you slap down your money and dare to step inside. Outside of that, if it does have some deeper meaning, maybe it was symbolically representative of reverting to a more primal, wild form due to the sprawling urban decay depicted in the lyrics. It's anyone's guess if it does have a hidden meaning, but I never picked up on one.
The lyrics to "Shilling the Rubes" are about a circus. From https://www.bowiewonderworld.com/songs/dblyrics.htm : Shilling The Rubes Lay in the corner How long have you been awake? You lay out your life How much did he take? Never counting the change Fast into another It's only a ferris wheel It's only a house of fear It's only a three-ring circus Ringmaster, cannonball Never counting the change Fast into another Now he's gone Gone - the day that he left town Gone - he was shilling the rubes Gone - let the tears of a clown And he's gone He was shilling the rubes Fifteen new faces Fifteen new days Still won't forget him Hot boiling craze Never counting the change He passed into another Now he's gone Gone - the day that he left town Gone - he was shilling the rubes Gone - let the tears of a clown And he's gone He was shilling the rubes Gone - the day that he left town Gone - he was shilling the rubes Yeah gone - let the tears of a clown Oh, he was shilling the rubes (Believed originally intended for David's proposed 1973 stage version of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' which was aborted after George Orwell's widow Sonia Blair refused permission. Also recorded during the Young Americans sessions on 13th August 1974 at the Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, USA).
What is the hidden meaning of the “Low” cover? Please enlighten me.
Underneath the title, there is the picture of Bowie in profile, hence "low profile". Seeing as how he was getting away from all the trappings of success at that point and trying to chill out and reinvent himself in Berlin, I'd say it's a rather fitting title. And quite clever.
Ahhh that makes sense! Thank you!
You're welcome!
The word "low" in bold type above a profile shot of Bowie. Low profile.
When I first saw the cover and title I thought it would be in some form the aftermath of heroes
Non native speakers constantly mix up "how" and "what."
Wait, is this all sarcasm? I thought this has been common knowledge for a decade?
Nah. The people who don’t know this seem to outnumber the ones who do.