The David Bowie of 1999 is an interesting one, after an incredibly experimental and while uneven never uninteresting 1990s he seems to finally becomes at peace with his own legacy and place in the pop and rock musical landscape. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Not only was this a decade of intense musical experimentation, it was also a time that focused on endeavours outside of the music industry with a particular interest in the power of the rapidly expanding Word Wide Web. In 1998 Bowie became the first (maybe only?) rockstar internet service provider with the founding of BowieNet. This service not only offered fans high-speed internet access but also unparalleled access into the world of David Bowie including live chats, live video feeds, chat rooms and bulletin boards for just £19.95 per month. The forward-thinking Bowie always saw the potential of technology and the far-reaching impact it could have, this has been a theme in his music since as far back as his debut album. Bowie’s online community attracted approximately 100,000 users and by all accounts seems to have been a success.
Not only this but in 1997 Bowie pioneered the practice of celebrity bonds by creating asset-backed securities of his back catalogue before 1990, that’s 25 albums and 287 songs, that people could invest in current and future revenue streams of. Bowie sold these bonds for a total of $55m dollars that he received upfront; he then used this money to buy back all of his music that was owned by his former manager. Bowie did this just before the rise of MP3 sharing and music piracy meaning he came up with a business idea at the exact point in history where it would be at its most profitable.
Free from any sort of money troubles at this point Bowie’s personal life was also the most stable it had ever been, married to his wife Imam since 1992 and taking on board a role of elder statesman to the disenfranchised, a noted influence on the current Brit pop scene, and by all definitions an icon of global fashion and pop culture, he had very little to prove to the world. His previous album, Earthling, attempted to capture the drum and bass/jungle sounds that were popular at the time but as he moved into his next follow up project it wasn’t experimentation that was on his mind. Now, at peace at last, it seems he was finally ready to look back and really start to reminisce over all that he has achieved and even delve into his own mortality.
Bowie’s next studio album after Earthling has its origin in the video game Omikron: The Nomad Soul, developed by Quantic Dream, published by Eldos Interactive, and released on Microsoft Windows and the Sega Dreamcast. This game features a player exploring a three-dimensional city, investigating a case of serial killings, and unravelling the supernatural truth behind the city's ancient history. The writer and director of the game David Cage chose Bowie over a list of other applicants including Bjork, as well as trip-hop groups Massive Attack and Archive. Bowie was attracted to the buddhist themes of the game, noting that when a character died, they would be reincarnated. Along with creating the music for the game Bowie also appeared as a character named Boz, a singer in the in-game band who would perform in bars in Omikron City. Bowie’s wife Imam also played a character the protagonist could reincarnate into. The music from Omikron was the basis for much of Bowie’s next studio album, Hours, and the introspective nature or what Bowie calls “emotional subset” of the game would be the main thing that he was trying to capture with the music.
The subsequent album, Hours, is a complete departure from the kind of music Bowie was making previously, this is a mix of pop and art rock styles and the closest comparison in his own career is probably Hunky Dory from way back in 1971. The lyrics are introspective and deal with topics like collapsing relationships, angst, and growing older. This is the birth of a new era in Bowie’s career and the album cover even reflects this, featuring a long-haired Bowie holding his Earthling persona self in his arms with Bowie saying it’s supposed to represent life and death/past and present. It’s almost as if he’s saying goodbye to his old self, the one who felt the need to keep up the current styles and trends even as he entered old age and accept that maybe at this point in his career that’s not what he needs to do and things can be a bit more relaxed.
The album opens with its lead single “Thursday’s Child” which sees Bowie at his at his most introspective and confessional with Bowie biographer Chris O’Leary stating this him taking up the moniker of sad clown once again that hadn’t been seen since such early songs like “When I Live My Dream” his debut and “Letter to Hermione” from Space Oddity. There is a sense that there is a raw emotional man behind these tracks, the personas that he used, since Ziggy Stardust, to build a wall around real sincere emotion were starting to crack and crumble down. Guitarist Reeves Gabrels later revealed that for the backup vocals Bowie originally wanted the R&B girl group TLC but he vetoed them. He said: “I was David's friend, and his guitar player, musical director, co-producer, but I was also a fan. I felt like I was protecting his 'thing'. I wanted to make sure he stayed cool and stayed connected. He was a voracious chaser of new things. But not every new thing [should be chased].” I have to say I seriously disagree with Gabrels and he has robbed me of the TLC/Bowie collab I never knew I needed. Anyway, it’s a strong opening track and a good gateway into the more mellow sound of this record.
Looking back on lost love is “Something in the Air” which Bowie told people not to read into too much as he is perfectly happy with his wife. When speaking of this track he alluded to the time in his life where he was desperately in love with someone and it didn’t work out, this is likely in reference to his old girlfriend from the 60s Hermione Farthingale, it seems with the distance of time and age Bowie is now ready to look back on the great heartbreaks of his life and imbue his songs with a real sense of empathy for the smitten and sensitive man he once was. A lost relationship being viewed through the rear-view mirror, an under spoken about and underappreciated Bowie track, I like it a lot.
Carrying on from the themes of the previous track is “Survive” which is a nakedly romantic song which features a phrase that Bowie had only sung on a handful of previous songs “I love you” and never in as much as forthright and genuine way as it’s heard here. The song is about love of course, it’s about romance, but it’s also about nostalgia, ageing, mortality and the way we frame our lives. Featuring Bowie on a 12 string guitar it feels the type confessional singer-songwriter ballad that has avoided his entire career and it’s all the more powerful because of it.
At over seven minutes “If I’m Dreaming My Life” is one of Bowie’s longest songs with a strong build up and ethereal simplicity it’s probably the dark horse of the album, it creeps up on you with its power, and by the end starts to enter a point of pure theatricality before slowly petering out.
My favourite moment on the whole record is “Seven” which sees Bowie alluding to his family in a way that is more direct than anything I’ve ever heard from him, his mother, his father, his brother, I am not sure he’s ever laid things out quite like that before. But there’s more to it than that, this is a song about now, you’ve got seven days to live your life, you’ve got the weeks as they’re happening and that’s it. Bowie himself highlighted that the song is about forgetting the ways you’ve been told to live your life, whatever your mother, father, family members, or the gods think you’re supposed to do. I guess there’s a lot of ways to read into this song, it’s full of symbolism and expression, you can look into the family angle, but whatever way you hear it to me it sounds raw and real and I think it’s one of the great Bowie songs for me it just hits an emotional core as well as anything else he’s done.
In 1998, Bowie announced a songwriting contest asking fans to submit lyrics to a new piece of music called “What’s Really Happening?”. The prize included a $15,000 contract with the publishing company Bug Music, a trip to New York to attend the recording session for the song, a one year subscription to BowieNet and Bowie’s back catalogue, $500 of worth of music from CDNow and a three-subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. Bowie made the melody and chorus of the song available on his website everyone from amateurs to established musicians to the members of The Cure entered with a total of 80,000 applicants. The winner was 20-year-old Ohio resident Alex Grant who brought his friend his Larry Tressler to the recording session with him and Bowie invited the two to do the backing vocals on the song. They cast the recording session live on BowieNet and it is reportedly the first ever major event to ever use a 360-degree camera (or “BowieCam”) for broadcast. As a way to showcase just how much access BowieNet could give fans to the artist this competition and subsequent recording session was a testament to the internet’s power to break down barriers as the roles of celebrity and content creation would only be further distorted as we head towards the present day. This 20-year-old kid from Ohio was a David Bowie fan who heard about a competition and then before he knew it he’s in a recording session in New York with Bowie himself, with a co-writing credit on one of his songs, and singing backup vocals. It’s incredible!
“The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell” first appeared on the soundtrack to the 1999 movie Stigmata. This is probably the rockiest track on the album and its title recalls other Bowie adjacent tracks like “Oh! You Pretty Things” from Hunky Dory or “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell” from the Bowie produced Stooges album Raw Power. It started life as a potential track for a Reeves Gabrels solo album but Bowie saw hit potential in it and wanted to claim it as his own. Bowie has given a number of interpretations of the song calling it a put down on the glam era, or also saying it references Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel Vile Bodies and the young rich sodalities, the “bright young things” of the post-WWI era, or even a parody of the over-the-top music of the 1998 Todd Haynes film Velvet Goldmine, which itself takes its name from an outtake from the Ziggy Stardust sessions. Too many references to keep up with, so little time.
“New Angels of Promise” harks back to the Berlin era, particularly “Sons of the Silent Age” from "Heroes". This song reflects Christian themes that are scattered throughout the album right from the album cover which alludes to the fall of Adam and cradling the dead body of Jesus in its iconography. A song with a slightly epic feel, Bowie's backup vocals “oh oh, oh oh” almost start to feel like a parody of his vocal delivery at points. Nothing wrong with the song but I’d say one of the most uninteresting moments on the record.
Talking about harkening back to the Berlin era, the Japanese instrumental “Brilliant Adventure” would not at all sound out of place on the second half of "Heroes" alongside “Sense of Doubt” and “Moss Garden”. It’s a strange one to have placed on this record, it does not fit in with the style of theme of the album, it feels like something from a different project.
Bowie originally wanted to name this album The Dreamers after the closing track on this record, but Gabrels convinced him that it sounded more like the title of Mariah Carey of Celine Dion album (Gabrels always spoiling the fun, first he vets TLC and now this!). The song dissects a traveller who is past his prime, a searcher, a lonely soul, the last of the dreamers. An investigation into himself is meant to pull together all the main themes from this album, Bowie reckoning with himself, with his place in the musical landscape, coming to accept who he is and making peace with it all. This is an album created by a thoughtful and introspective person, thinking about all the troubles he’s had along the way, and finally, now into the later stages of his life, finding peace.
“We all Go Through” was a bonus track on the Japanese edition of this album and the B-side for the single “Thursday’s Child”. The end credits to the video game Omikron and it is packed full of homonyms like morning/mourning, lunarscape/lunar escape, nobody’s eyes/nobody sighs and further wordplay “we’ll be all right” “we’ll all be right”. A fun if slightly forgettable track, but in the same way that Hours is spoken about today, a little lost in the grandiosity of Bowie’s wider discography.
The reception to this album when it came out was mixed although many critics applauded Bowie for taking a more back to basics approach with Q magazine stating, “this time around, Bowie sounds influenced by nobody except himself, and he couldn't have picked a better role model”. Overall, this is the beginning of a new era for Bowie that sees him no longer jumping from style to style. The music here feels more relaxed and natural to him with Stephen Thomas Erlewine stating that it feels like classic Bowie without referencing any particular era, he is less self-conscious about living in the past and not anxious about creating a new future, he is simply here now making music. I think this album is at its best when it’s open and confessional in songs like “Seven” and at its worst when it tries to go grand without really earning it on things like “If I’m Dreaming My Life” and “New Angels of Promise”. It’s a solid Bowie record and lays the groundwork well for what’s about to come as he enters the 21st century.
Hours ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ [7/10]
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