EARTHLING

Items ordered by ending time | Showing only 100
Show all DAVID BOWIE Earthling items on eBay

Visit eBay search:'prog rock' for items
Sell your DAVID BOWIE items on eBay !

No release results - showing artist results instead

Sort: Recent best-seller | Results cached

Visit Amazon tag:'Progressive Rock' for more prog rock

WHERE IS THE LITTLE WONDER ?

If you think that "Outside" was a one shot album to feature techno beats or deep house investigations; you were wrong. Here comes "Earthling".

Although some of the songs could be considered as straight forward Bowie numbers, these background rhythms are completely denaturizing them. But this is only my opinion.

I have never been into this type of music, and even being a Bowie fan, I'm not deaf, dumb and blind (remember the no more heroes stuff). Lots of heavy post-grunge sounds as well, make this album rather difficult to bear.

I particularly hate "Dead Man Walking" and its house beat. But actually I don't like this album at all. At least "Outside" had an interesting storyboard, even if the music could never move me. "Earthling" doesn't have this feature.

As usual, the clips are highly creative and might be sufficient to apprehend this album. The live version of "Telling Lies" recorded in Amsterdam (Paradiso) and available on "LiveAndWell.com" is far much superior to the studio one. Simply rocking. But I like this.

One of the only bearable song to my ears is "I'm Afraid Of Americans". It depicts the invasion of the American "culture" all over the world (David once mentioned that he first thought of this while seeing the opening of the Mac Donald's in Indonesia).

The song is not a new one, it was co-written by Eno and Bowie and appeared in the movie "Showgirls" from the Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven (1995).

This album could have maybe been a decent one if restricted to a more straight-forward rock sound (like while played live). As such, I just can't stand it. What did you do David? One star.

So, here we have a good example how one can kill the good music. The recipe is - use heavy simplistic drum machine!

Bowie's last album from "new-electronic" era. There are some good songs - "I'm Afraid Of Americans" or "Little Wonder", some good instrumental arrangements ( in "Seven Years In Tibet "or "Law" songs). In fact, there is enough of strong material for good Bowie album. But the realisation killed it!

I don't think it's done by mistake - Bowie is too professional for that. I think the idea was just to catch young fans , so the main accent was put into heavy techno/house rhytnms.

The result we know - no new listeners, and negative reaction from old fans. And there isn't a classic case with Bowie experimentation. I think, music just was killed by that. It's pity, I think from that material strong Bowie album could be produced.

Bowie sounds like a damned fool on this album. For his latest effort in proving how hip to the times he was, Bowie embraced the cutting-edge programmed percussion styles of 1997, and he often lets the songs go for long stretches where his programmed percussion is the only important part of the sound. The harder he tries, though, the clearer it is that he's a poseur (he was 50 when this album came out!!!) and the more I wish he would just go back to arranging his songs like on Buddha of Suburbia. This album has aged horrendously, and in my observations has been one that has been disproportionately easy to find used at very cheap prices.

And yet, out of the nine tracks on here, only two seem flat-out bad to me. "The Last Thing You Should Do" is notable only in how un-notable it is, and the closing "Law (Earthlings on Fire)" is every bit as embarrassing as "Pallas Athena" was in 1993, but once I get used to the monotonous percussion choices, I find myself enjoying every other song on here. "Dead Man Walking," for instance, sounds at first like Bowie has made one of the tackiest songs of his entire career, and yet I wasn't surprised at all when I saw a video of him performing an acoustic version of the song that sounded like a career highlight. The arrangement is hideous, mind you, but the song itself is good enough that I wouldn't mind hearing it again once in a while. And the rest just sounds like a bunch of solid, tweaked pop songs crossed with horrible techno monsters. The opening "Little Wonder" is basically just a lightweight pop ballad, except in the moments where it gets dark in the "so far away" repeated vocals, and it definitely sets a pleasant tone for the album. The "SATELLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITES" backing vocal part is a strong enough hook to make "Looking for Satellites" enjoyable, and I even like the endless noisemaking of Gabrels' guitar playing. "Battle for Britain (The Letter)" is a little too noisy and chaotic to work completely given how relatively simplistic it is at its core, but I like the individual ideas, and the song works better than it probably should. "Seven Years in Tibet" annoys me more than a bit when the "trance" beat is pushed to the forefront, but whenever it slips out of that mode into a heavy guitar rocker, I'm thoroughly sucked in. It's got a nice vocal melody, anyway, even if I don't pay much attention to the lyrics. And "Telling Lies," well, I crack up every time I hear that dead-man croak saying the title of the song; I just have to get around the drums, as usual.

But of course, the big highlight is "I'm Afraid of Americans," originally a collaboration with Brian Eno and infamous for getting remixed by Nine Inch Nails. This is the one case on the album (in my opinion) where the percussion is used in service of the song and not as a gimmick, as it works with the jittery synth line and the stuttering backing vocal sounds in a nearly ideal manner. The lyrics are really great as well; I feel like the minimalism helps amp up the paranoid vibe of the song even further, to the point that when Bowie cuts in with, "God is an American" it almost sounds horrifying. It's a freaking classic on an album that badly needs a freaking classic.

So ok, I can't say I love this album, and I'm not even sure I would recommend it, but if you can cut through the jungle of, um, jungle, there's some awfully good material here. If you can find it for a couple of dollars (and believe me, you probably can), consider getting it.

Hardly a little "wonder", but good still

This album is not very highly regarded here on our beloved archives, but at the time of its release in 1997 Earthling was (in my personal opinion anyway) the best Bowie effort since 1980's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and thus something of a comeback for the man. I used to listen to this album a lot at the time when I discovered it, which must have been a few years after its release. Listening to it again now several years later, the quality of the album does not hold up as well as it used to for me. But I still find enjoyment in several of the tracks, particularly the opening Little Wonder. Many Rock fans will undoubtedly be turned off by Bowie's seemingly wholehearted embrace of contemporary production and particularly the programmed drums (sometimes mixed with real drums) that occasionally creates the feeling of a re-mix album. But one might keep in mind that Bowie has always been embracing new sounds and technology throughout his long career - sometimes with success and other times with less success.

Some tracks on Earthling are admittedly a bit annoying due to their repetitiveness, like Looking For Satellites and The Last Thing You Should Do. But generally, Bowie sounds inspired and you can tell that he had fun in the making of this album. Several of the songs have witty lyrics. What this album lacks is one or two more relaxed tunes that would let the listener catch his breath a bit.

Bowie would go on to make better albums in 'hours...' and Heathen, but Earthling somehow indicated a new beginning. Overall, it is a worthwhile listen.