Product Description

After having spent the the mid-'80s putting on his acting shoes for Absolute Beginners and Labyrinth, Bowie returned tomusic by grabbing his usual henchmen Carlos Alomar and Carmine Rojas and joining forces with old schoolmate Peter Frampton. NEVER LET ME DOWN found Bowie writing or co-writing everything with the exception of Iggy Pop's "Bang Bang". Songs such as "Day-In Day-Out" and "Time Will Crawl" were perfect Bowie songs that worked opposite ends of the spectrum; the everyday reality of a struggling woman living on the periphery of society versus the ambiguity of time itself. Although the creamy synths and slick production are occasional reminders that NLMD was cut in the '80s, these flourishes work especially well on "Zeroes" and the title track. The only hint of indulgence comes in the semi-mythical "Glass Spider" and the rap duet vignette with Mickey Rourke (!) that Bowie dropsinto the middle of "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)". After that chilling encounter, Bowie fled the solo life for the safer confines of Tin Machine in 1989.

Track Listing

1. Day In Day Out
2. Time Will Crawl
3. Beat Of Your Drum
4. Never Let Me Down
5. Zeroes
6. Glass Spider
7. Shining Star (Makin' My Love)
8. New York's In Love
9. 87 And Cry
10. Bang Bang

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35070 in Music
• Released on: 1999-09-20
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Customer Reviews

Bowie's 2nd worst album
After the wretched Tonight album came Never Let Me Down. At least this album had a few more ideas but the songs really aren't up to scratch. The one saving grace is the track Time Will Crawl - by a country mile, Bowie's best late 80s song.

WARNING: Mickey Rourke RAPS on this album.
Rating: 3/10

Best tracks: "Never Let Me Down", "Zeroes"

The 1980's output of David Bowie is one of the more derided eras of modern music, in direct contrast to his previous decade of formidable work, which is usually hailed as one of the best. After starting the decade with a bang in the form of the splendid Scary Monsters, he took a grimly foreboding break from albums (three long years, broken up by occasional soundtrack work and collaborations), coming back with his most successful LP yet (Let's Dance), which was pretty good when all's said and done, but it's more throwaway mood was a serious indication of the shallower direction Bowie would be taking. The next album, Tonight, was (the singles excepted) a disaster, and all of a sudden this erstwhile great artist became a has-been. Bowie seemed to know this at the time too, slating Tonight not long after it had come out. Following some pretty good soundtrack work for Absolute Beginners, When the Wind Blows, The Falcon and the Snowman and yes, even Labyrinth, Bowie was determined to get back on track with his next album proper. Yet despite whatever good intentions he may have had, Never Let Me Down remains the worst-rated Bowie album ever, an embarrassing failure on all levels according to almost everybody. I actually think it's slightly better than Tonight, though that's obviously not saying much. The majority of the criticism has been laid out towards the anonymous, loud production, making the album indistinguishable any other bit of overcooked 1980`s pop. It`s also not original in the slightest, which is worrying considering Bowie used to be such an innovator; yet like Tonight, it doesn't even work as fun, disposable pop in the way that Let's Dance did. Yet when it tries to be relatively adventurous, it still sinks as the utterly laughable "Glass Spider" goes to show. There is one really great song here though, more on that later.

The first two songs here made for the worst Bowie singles since....well ever, I suppose! "Day-In Day-Out", once you get over wondering why Bowie was so content to remain so....well so-so, is reasonably appealing in an undemanding, agreeably superficial way, but it's emptiness becomes wearing after a few minutes. "Time Will Crawl" drifts by without offending too much, but it's also completely forgettable. "Beat of Your Drum" is pretty silly, but quite amusing with it, especially with its dumb lyrics. "Zeroes" sounds like a live recording (though the audience screams at the start could be overdubs, I'm not sure), and this is reasonably okay; if you have low expectations of this album (and I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't, given its reputation), you might find yourself thinking `oh, it's not THAT bad, is it?', but then you think this is the guy who sang "Heroes" and all is not forgiven. It's not really fair to judge Bowie so harshly on his post-Scary Monsters output, as there's some truly excellent music of his to be found after 1980, but the likes of Tonight and Never Let Me Down are never going to get any kind of critical re-evaluation any time soon; they weren't great then, and they're not great now. The would-be ambitious "Glass Spider" is a drag, hollow-sounding and portentous; it makes the similarly out-of-place "Ricochet" from Let's Dance seem like a gem in comparison.

Now, the very silly "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)" is, I'll bet, one of the most hated Bowie songs ever - it's so goofy, bubblegum, trashy....yet, at least it has a lighter touch that's not evident on most of the tracks here - I mean, it's a pretty crap song, but at least you could almost call this one a guilty pleasure! Yet what on EARTH is Mickey Rourke (yes, that Mickey Rourke, how many other Mickey Rourkes have you heard of?) doing here, `rapping' somewhere in the middle? Quite surreal. "New York's in Love" rocks out inoffensively for a few minutes and then goes away, "'87 and Cry" does the same and I can't even hum this one, it's that forgettable. "Bang Bang" features probably the most badly dated moment in any Bowie song - it's whenever the title's mentioned and the whole song kind of stops and then jumps back in really awkwardly. Bowie's going through some seriously tired motions on this song in particular, and it's a sorry end to an album that's not unreasonably regarded as one of the man's weakest ever. If you're feeling extremely generous, it's not a boring listen ("Glass Spider" excepted), but it is a somewhat dispiriting one. And yes, I must add again that it is better than Tonight, so it's not quite the worst Bowie album!

Yet before I close this review, I must add that there is one absolute gem here; the title track was, somewhat tellingly, recorded separately from the rest of the album, in swift time and at the last minute. As a result, it has none of the cluttered bombast of the rest of Never Let Me Down and is a delightful, bouncy and really quite wonderful pop gem. It could have fit on quite nicely on the Labyrinth soundtrack, and yes that is a compliment! It's got the best vocals on the album, the best chorus, the sweetest feel and finest music. Its place here on a pretty poor album means that it's destined to remain underrated, though it was released as a single, but I'm imaging that by the time it was released (it was the third single), the damage wreaked by its parent album on Bowie's reputation had already been done.

Bowie ended up being just as vitriolic towards this album as he was towards Tonight, and it would be that the next album would mark a return to form. Or so he said. For what followed next.....was Tin Machine.

PS: There was another track on Never Let Me Down entitled "Too Dizzy", which was deleted from subsequent reissues of the album, presumably due to the somewhat sexist lyrics. I've not heard it, and that's probably for the best.

Again, not as bad as commonly made out
When I bought this upon release I really liked it, regarding NLMD as a return to form for Bowie (indeed, I had heard Beat of Your Drum on the radio prior to the album's release and had been impressed). Over time it depends on my mood - it has dated badly but I can still enjoy it on a given day.

Day in Day Out is the weakest track from a pretty good first side, with Time Will Crawl, Beat of Your Drum and Zeroes being the best tracks on the album. The second side of the original vinyl decends into mediocrity, though Glass Spider is interesting and the closing Bang Bang goes out on something of a high point. In between are some of the worst Bowie tracks of his career, especially the truly awful Shining Star and Too Dizzy, which was subsequently removed from the CD reissue! New York's In Love was pretty embarrassing too.