Stephen Holland - Multimedia Journalist

The Bowie Project #17 - Tonight (1984) David Bowie’s 16th studio album, Tonight , was released on September 24, 1984, by EMI Records. The sound and style of the record is mostly a continuation of his previous release, the hugely commercially successful Let’s Dance , although this album does add a more reggae influenced sound to the mix. The success of the previous record had a lot to do with the influence of its producer, the Chic bandleader Nile Rodgers, who gave Bowie a more commercial mainstream sound and was known as a guaranteed “hit maker”. This album however was not produced by Rodgers and as an attempt to repeat what made that record so popular it mostly fails, this record is seen by many, Bowie included, as an attempt to retain his newly found fan base without actually being fully aware of what it was they were responding to in him, it kept most of the same personnel, features plenty of cover songs and reworkings of old material, and creatively is a low point for the artist. I...

The Bowie Project #16 – Let’s Dance (1983) Let’s Dance is David Bowie’s 15 th studio album, it was released on 14 April 1983, by EMI Records. After the release of his previous album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980 Bowie began a period of musical collaborations and film appearances. He appeared on stage in productions of The Elephant Man and Bertolt Brecht’s Baal , he released the legendary track “Under Pressure” with Queen as well as providing the title song to the 1982 Paul Schrader movie Cat People , he also filmed leading roles in the movies The Hunger and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence . For the release of this album, he cut ties with his record label RCA Records and for the first time in many years Tony Visconti did not act as his album's producer. After so much musical experimentation Bowie wanted a commercial hit record and instead hired disco producer Nile Rodgers to produce this record. Nile Rodgers is Chic bandleader and guitars who had scored numerous top te...

The Bowie Project #15 – Baal (1982) By the time we get to the 1980 and the release of Scary Monsters David Bowie was taking stock of his life and trying to think ahead to the future. As he was getting older and watching a new generation of artists and musicians coming up, he wanted to prepare for a life beyond rock n’ roll, he wanted to become an actor. He already had two major film roles, the alien Thomas Jerome Newton in the 1976 picture The Man Who Fell to Earth , a part he said he didn’t need to even act for because he was so spaced out on drugs he already seemed like an alien, and the WWI veteran turned male escort Paul Ambrosius von Przygodski in 1978’s Just a Gigolo , a movie which by all accounts was a complete failure. However, his appearance in The Man Who Fell to Earth was noticed by theatre director Jack Hofsiss who offered him the lead role as John Merrick in the Broadway show The Elephant Man . The story is based on Joseph Merrick, a real man who lived in the Victorian ...