Product Description

It seems hard to believe, given the career full of revolutionary and hugely influential stylistic shifts that followed,that this superb record was only David Bowie's fourth. Yet HUNKY DORY ranks alongside ZIGGY STARDUST, LOW, and SCARY MONSTERS as one of Bowie's finest and most consistent albums. Ironically, it is one of the artist's least rock-oriented efforts, bearing little relation to what came before or after in his discography. Instead, HUNKY DORY covers a wide range of styles from operatic pop ("Life on Mars?") to low-key folk ("Quicksand") to English music hall ditties ("Kooks").
There are standout tracks, most notably the glam-rock anthem"Oh, You Pretty Things!" and the chugging, life-affirming "Changes", which went on to become one of Bowie's all-time signature songs. But HUNKY DORY is solid from beginning to end, thanks to the fine musicians, Bowie's excellent songwriting, and the artist's now-mature sense of performance. These qualities fold such wild cards as the tongue-in-cheek celebrity send-up "Andy Warhol", the psychedelic folk of "The Bewlay Brothers", and exuberant jam of "Queen Bitch", the album'sonly overt rocker, neatly into the deck, making for the first of Bowie's truly indisputable masterpieces.

Track Listing

1. Changes
2. Oh! You Pretty Things
3. Eight Line Poem
4. Life on Mars?
5. Kooks
6. Quicksand
7. Fill Your Heart
8. Andy Warhol
9. Song for Bob Dylan
10. Queen Bitch
11. The Bewlay Brothers

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #937 in Music
• Released on: 1999-09-06
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Amazon.co.uk Review
The precursor to Bowie's masterpiece, The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Hunky Dory points in many of the same musical directions as Ziggy, with Bowie camping it up outrageously through a mixture of cabaret piano, coquettish lyrics and soaring vocals. After the hard rock "The Man Who Sold The World", Mick Ronson's guitar is turned down in favour of plenty of piano and acoustic guitar, as Bowie proves his mettle as a masterful singer-songwriter. Not a dull note is struck on the whole album, which flits from opener "Changes" to the vampy "Oh! You Pretty Thing" to the heart-wrenching "Life On Mars" with a seemingly impeccable ear for a tune. Flirty, sexy and irresistibly seductive. --Amber Cowan

Customer Reviews

From the brow of the superbrain
This album contains the best songwriting of David Bowie's magnificent career. Where to start? Well. it kicks off with Changes; a signature tune for his career. I recall the opening bars being played in the documentary "Cracked Actor" from 1974. Bowie, stepping out of a car in the USA looking emaciated, lost, and delicate.The warm tones of his pre-Ziggy Englishness seemed to wrap around the walking figure. Changes, like Oh You Pretty Things, and Kooks, is Bowie stripped bare. For once the honesty is almost too intense: "I turned myself to face me, but never caught a glimpse".
And for the next six years Bowie kept running, at least until the near breakdown of Station to Station/Low.
The album is haunting, folksy, melodic, wordy, kooky, dark and light, and seems to contain almost every aspect of him, except the rocking madman who emerged next from the depths of his imagination.This is Bowie for music lovers; it is the last great sixties album. Bowie killed the sixties with Ziggy, but in so doing laid down some beautiful sounds on this album.
I cannot hear this album without feeling sad; it is like the end of childhood. Life on Mars is perfect, and when you hear the piano fade, and the old Bakelite telephone ringing out in the background, and Bowie himself uttering "wonderful"...you have to agree.

ultimate bowie
A narrow winner in the toss up to decide whether to award 4 stars or 5 stars. This is a very clever concept album from a very productive period in the Bowie career. He was never one to follow trends, and fans will be pleased this was so.

Although all the tracks are straighforward they are also memorable and pleasing to the ear.

Still shines brightly...

This is a truly superb collection of tracks - delicate, heartfelt and almost personal. To me, this epitomises an artist stretching himself a little just before the big push into the big time.

Like many here, I came to this wonderful album some years after it was released (after the intial "Glam" thing had faded in fact). In some ways, I wish he'd continued with this style for another album but things were moving so very quickly during this period and "pop" music was fragmenting rapidly - the commercial "Glam acts" like Slade, Mud, The Sweet & T Rex on the one hand and harder edged "Prog Rock" on the other from Soft Machine and Van Der Graaf generator to Yes, Pink Floyd, ELP, Led Zep & Genesis etc. etc. on the other.

In the company of the above bands, Bowie could have been overshadowed, but it's thanks to the rockier "Ziggy Stardust" that he didn't and this album can still be enjoyed, getting on for forty years later, as the charming, beautiful, thoughtful classic that it is...

The 1990 remastering was done very well indeed and adds a few extra tracks. I'm not sure why it had to be released again in 1999 without these bonus tracks (when everyone else is raiding the vaults for undiscovered gems to put on a new re-mastering but there you go), but since the prices are so reasonable for either it doesn't matter quite so much in my opinion.

Whichever version you go for - a LOVELY album and one to treasure and savour for the next forty years.....