How would you rate "Outside" (1995) by David Bowie?

Yeah, that is dire. My Dad had that album, and it would get played regularly in the car back then. Dark times.

 

she also covered Bowie's "Girls". and, lest we forget, they did this...

 

i like Loving The Alien and Don't Look Down as well as Blue Jean, but that's it. i've recently been digitizing my 12"s and thus i'm more intimately familiar with this album than ever before.

 

I think she got lucky with the credits on the single...

 

After "Blue Jean," those are definitely among the better contributions to the album. Then, whoops, here comes the worst version of "God Only Knows" ever.

The more I think about it, I'll be really shocked if there's a fourth box set.

 

i suppose it depends whether the supporters of those albums are sufficient in number, and whether there are enough completists and collectors to buy it for the expected live albums.
but they may take a break from the boxes after #3, go back to a steady supply of deluxe editions for the same RCA period covered by the boxes, and only then tackle the EMI period.

 

(shudder)

 

See, that's the thing. She was fire at that point in time - the real deal with a tremendous backstory and immense talent. The stars had finally aligned for Tina Turner and more power to her because I love her voice and her whole deal. But at that point in time, it's like she was getting passed around for stars on the career-make to wear like jewelry to lend credibility and some rubbed-off funk to their efforts. At least Jagger and Turner had some history and some common ground when they did State of Shock. What the hell was she doing singing a duet with the guy who was wearing the weird get-up and all that make-up in the Ashes To Ashes video on MTV a short time previous ? She 's wasted as much as Bowie was on that ( as you noted so accurately ) emasculated version of an Iggy Pop song that was sanitized by eliminating the OD scene from the lyric that gives it it's degenerate pathos. The problem I have with that duet isn't the fact that they did it, it's that it was a mutually- phoned-in bit of not much that did a disservice to all concerned, all to a lilting island beat. Jamaica Jerk-Off for two, served tepid.

D.D.

 

There will be. It will cover the years 1983-1987. I will be a beautiful package. But it will be empty.

 

But you could say more or less the same about Bowie's (inferior) version of "China Girl." If making money for Iggy was part of the aim, then sanitizing it was probably necessary.

I don't recall the timing Bowie and Tina's albums -- weren't these two records released around the same time in '84? If so, "Tonight" would have been recorded around the same time as Private Dancer, and before Tina Turner was, as you say, "on fire." I'm hazy on the timing, but my own impression was that doing the song with her was less craven than it may have seemed.

 

Tiny Dancer came out in May of 1984.
Tonight was recorded May-June and released in September that year.

 

It's not a mystery he treated Iggy this way. He was on record saying that Idiot came about as Iggy being the guinea pig for all experiments while Bowie had no musical ideas of his own and that producing Idiot was a huge help for Low subsequently. I guess it's ok. I mean he believed in Iggy when nobody else did and single-handedly saved him from obscurity.

 

To be fair, Tina and Bowie recorded "Tonight" before she had re-emerged as a major star. Tina was right on the cusp and had already had some success with "Let's Stay Together", but she'd not "come back" yet...

 

"Private Dancer", man! "Tiny Dancer" is an Elton John song!

 

oops. I'm not a fan of his, either.

 

The single "What's Love Got to do with it" was released May 1st, 1984. Bowie's single "Tonight" was recorded later that month. At least I'm pretty sure of this.

 

But "What's Love..." didn't become a big hit until June/July in the US.

I saw Tina open for Lionel Richie in early June 1984, and when she introduced "What's Love..." as her "new single", pretty much no one in the crowd knew the song - it definitely hadn't vaulted up the charts yet.

So like I said, Tina was on the cusp of superstardom when she recorded with Bowie but she wasn't there quite yet.

And even the success of "What's Love..." didn't ensure that she'd become the major star she turned out to be - it took more hit singles and the overall success of the album to do that. If the other singles flopped, we'd view her comeback differently...

 

Aah.
Song still sucks, though.

 

When Haristar does a thread on Tonight there will be nothing left to talk about. Maybe that's a good thing.

 

1. Outside.
Outstanding!

Wait...what were we talking about?

 

Not on topic at all but didn't Bowie ask Tina Turner to marry him around this time?

 

The Tina/Bowie "Tonight"? I wouldn't say it sucks, but it does nothing for me...

 

i don't think the word was "marry"!

 

It fits my definition of bad.

 

She's Tina frackin' Turner...she doesn't need to be Bowie.