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

There's a reason for that...

I think 'hours...' has a huge advantage over Outside in that it's not pretentious. Unfortunately it's kinda low-energy and quite a retreat to commercial norms following the back-to-back commercial disappointments of Black Tie, Outside and Earthling. Producing a fairly pedestrian if tuneful record didn't do Bowie any commercial favors either - he finally seems to have gotten some of his mojo back on Heathen.

Yeah, that crap is nine inch nails on chalkboard as far as I'm concerned - can't stand it.

Exactly my take on it. I bought it just a couple of years after it came out - I'd been on a big Bowie collection kick starting with Diamond Dogs after having finally scrounged up the money to complete my Joni collection - and had such high hopes for the record. It had gotten a bunch of critical raves and was well-regarded by the Bowie fanatics over at Teenage Wildlife (remember that?). Well, to call the record a huge letdown would be an understatement. I just flat out didn't like it. Pretentious, overcooked, and annoying.

See, I've never felt like Diamond Dogs was a near miss. It doesn't fully-commit to the concept album thing, but seems to play around with a couple of interrelated themes that sorta/kinda overlap. So to me it's always come across as its own unique, Orwellian, post-apocalyptic thing, completely raving mad and yet somehow more coherent for it.

Flailing. That's how I'd characterize everything from Never Let Me Down thru 'hours...'. Although at least on 'hours...' he sounds mostly like himself again and not desperate in the least - just oddly bland. Maybe that was the pause that refreshed though, because on Heathen traces of that Bowie started to crop up again for the first time in about two decades.

I prefer 'hours...' and might even prefer Earthling. I got Black Tie about a year and a half ago and have barely listened to it. "Jump, They Say" is just brilliant, but unfortunately I think it makes the rest of the album look like total crap...

 

Black Tie White Noise was a No. 1 hit, his first since Tonight and his last till The Next Day.

 

Hallo Spaceboy w Pet Shop Boys, that's about it.

 

I've only played this one once. I haven't had it for a long time. About 2 years ago I started filling the gaps in my Bowie CD collection cheaply using Music Magpie. I'm still missing a couple. Outside was one of those. I remember thinking it was good but the spoken word segues made me cringe! I thought they were naff.

I haven't played the 90s and 2000s Bowie albums much as I got a lot of Bowie in a short time. This one doesn't strike me as one to prioritise as I dislike industrial rock.

I haven't voted as I don't really know this album. I'll give it a play this week and will come back to this thread.

 

Overall sales were poor though, and the label folded not long after the album came out. I think there was just a ton of pent up demand for solo Bowie in the UK after the whole Tin Machine thing.

It sank like a stone in the US, barely cracking the Top 40 albums chart at #39. (Outside actually did better here, getting to #21.)

Yeah, to me that's the best thing that came from Outside, by far. He'd have been much better-served by working with Pet Shop Boys at that time than Eno, who was years past his sell-by date.

 

For consistency his stuff up to Diamond Dogs then it's pick and mix.

 

Pretty great. Not essential as ziggy, hunky, low etc. but totally worth listening

 

That is a little unfair. Savage did go bust but their take was that they had a massive outlay on marketing and Arista/BMG failed to pay them on their global profits driving them into liquidation. Black Tie White Noise "apparently" sold more than hours... in the UK and it charted higher in the US (as did both 1. Outside and Earthling) than hours...

Mind you it's safe to say we would agree with very little as I think that horrible Pet Shop Boys single remix is an abomination (funny but I don't mind the 12" mixes as much).

 

I salute you Sir! you are a gentleman of taste and discernment.

 

I love the actual songs on the album but yeah, the narrative is as cohesive as Prince's Love Symbol album (ie: a jumbled mess with an indecipherable story)
I love I'm Deranged, I Have Not Been To Oxford Town & We Prick You. Certain tracks on Blackstar really remind me of this album, I doubt that was intentional but they could comfortably sit beside each other in a playlist.
I wish I could find some of those demos others were referring to or that someone could dig out other tracks Bowie claimed were recorded from these session. Since we get lots of nonsense boxsets for albums struggling to justify a set could we not get the complete Outside sessions in a set? :-/

 

Classic. My top 5.

 

Just the idea was enough to put me off.

 

This album is in my top 3 - along with Ziggy, Diamond Dogs, STS, Low and Lodger. Oh yes - and Iggy's The Idiot.

"It's pretentious."
Good - all Bowie's best albums are. If it wasn't pretentious it probably wouldn't have been any good.

"The Pet Shop Boys saved him and gave him a hit"
The PSB took his most powerful and exciting single for years, castrated it and mixed in some garbled Space Oddity lyrics in a failed attempt to be Post Modern. They ruined it, and the only reason people like it is because they like their music warm and fluffy, and not to make a noise.

"The storyline is hackneyed teenage rubbish."
No. Two books have been written about it.
It's a great story about death turning into art. (Now where have I heard something like that recently? Oh yes! Bowie's own death created astonishment when he seemed to be creating an artwork out of his own expiration.) Life imitating art imitating life etc.
David Bowie in Darkness: A Study of 1. Outside and the Late Career: Amazon.co.uk: Nicholas P. Greco: 9780786494101: Books
Outside: In tribute to David Bowie - a graphic novel, murder mystery, detective story, inspired by the album, 'Outside': Amazon.co.uk: Abby Hope Skinner: 9781537177441: Books

"It's too complicated"
That gives it longevity. If it was easily interpreted it would lose it's appeal quickly.

"There are no good songs"
It is packed with great songs, by the time you reach "I'm Deranged" you wonder when he's going to run out of tunes. He doesn't.

"I don't like the silly voices"
Have you heard the Leon Tapes? It is a wonderful mosaic of voices, music and creativity.

"The collaboration with Eno was a huge let-down."
No it wasn't - it was bursting with fresh ideas and experimentation. It was a big success.

"He just copied Nine Inch Nails"
Er - IT'S BOWIE AND ENO! Chicken and egg?
Trent Reznor: "I was in full-obsession mode with Bowie. I read into all the breadcrumbs he'd put out — the clues in his lyrics that reveal themselves over time, the cryptic photographs, the magazine articles — and I projected and created what he was to me. His music really helped me relate to myself and figure out who I was. He was a tremendous inspiration in terms of what was possible, what the role of an entertainer could be, that there are no rules. Then, in the mid-Nineties, he reached out to me and said, "Let's collaborate and do a tour together." It's hard to express how validating and surreal the whole experience of the Outside tour was — to actually meet this man in the flesh and find out, to my delight, that he passed any expectation I had."
Trent Reznor Recalls How David Bowie Helped Him Get Sober

"Hours is a better album."
Ha ha ha ha ha.
No.
Hours is half a good album, but nowhere near the level of Outside. Hours is where he really did run out of ideas half way through. His voice (while not up to STS levels) had been near peak on Outside, but on Hours the cracks were showing, and while he made the most of it on certain tracks in the next decade, it was never as good as on Outside.

What else? Oh yes - with Reeves Gabrels at the top of his game and Mike Garson summoning the ghosts of Aladdin Sane, he appeared to be so happy with this album that he went on to perform what would be his most challenging and adventurous tour since the 1974.

Not bad for a man of 48 years old who'd been performing since the early 60s. Mick Jagger ... yawn, Rod Stewart...snore....Roger Daltrey...Pink Floyd...wake me up when something interesting happens won't you...Paul McCartney...Foo Fighters...Cliff (cough) Richard...

 

I said pretty great. The first Bowie album I bought as a new release. Some excellent, memorable songs on there, and he succeeded in creating a creepy atmosphere. Not sure how well the 90's production has aged, it's certainly not a "timeless" sounding album. As with a lot of concept albums, I never really bothered to figure out the storyline.

 

Good points.... and sketchy math.

D.D.

 

I don't think Diamond Dogs the album was a near miss - it's colossal. I think the initial concept, the "Orwellian" end of things, fell apart - partly because the Orwell Estate made sure that it did, partly because Bowie was busy powder-coating the inside of his skull and likely had some...um... focus issues. But when the cave-in happened, it all collapsed into a fascinating pile of music - the sort of thing Nathan Adler might have been compelled to paw through looking for answers. It seems to me that the thing that holds both albums together, albeit less successfully with Outside, is the dark, atmospheric vibe they share. Perhaps Diamond Dogs' extra dose of sleaze was the additional glue Outside lacked. Yeah, that's it : Outside needed another dollop of sleaze....

D.D.

 

I do enjoy the dark moodiness of some of these songs. "The Motel" sounds like it was very inspired by Bowie's time as the Twin Peaks character, Phillip Jeffries.

I've talked about this on here before, but Brian Eno's great book A Year With Swollen Appendices covers Eno's projects circa 1994-1995, and spends a fair amount of time on the recording of 1. Outside. Great anecdote Eno tells of Bowie recording his vocal for "No Control", where Bowie the actor took over, and as Eno observes, it was like Bowie was in South Pacific when he raised his head to the sky singing the lines at the end: "It's all deranged / deranged / deeeranged".

 

I voted 'Essential' but I also love Bowie's Berlin Trilogy with Eno. My first Bowie album bought was 'Black Tie, White Noise'(which I still like very much including his cover of a Morrissey song), so 'Outside' was my 2nd Bowie album, except had bought the 2-CD Singles set and 'Sound and Vision' Box Ser in between. Then onto 'Hours...' And going back to buy 'Station to Station' then soon after, all of his older albums.

I know that most people here call 'Outside' an Industrial Rock album, but I just thought of it as an Art-Rock album. It holds up well over repeated listens, but owning so much music, I have not played it in awhile, so this thread has me p,anoint to play it a few times in the next week. I also own the box set of his albums from that time period with each album also containing a bonus 2nd CD of songs, so need to listen to what was on the 2nd CD with 'Outside'.

This thread and the Purple Rain Deluxe thread just reminds me how much I miss Bowie & Prince.

 

Bowie doing what he did best. The last thing you would have expected , a dark concept album of course. I never have been able to stick with the narrative of this album but it does contain some great music.

 

For me Outside is Top 5 Bowie and better than Scary Monsters.

 

Very major threadcrap, but in a lot of these photos, Bowie's hairline looks unnatural.

 

Better matching the all new and improved canines. Are trying to start a BWW-thread here ( was covered there ad nauseum) ?

 

Picked the second option. Really strong album IMO - I even like the segues. I'd rate it as second-tier Bowie (which is still incredibly high!), above the likes of even Scary Monsters. I've never knowingly listened to any Nine Inch Nails beyond the Quake soundtrack, but influences I can definitely hear here are Vangelis (that opening is sheer Blade Runner) and post-rebirth Scott Walker - if you want an interesting companion album to 1. Outside, you could do worse than pick up a copy of Walker's Tilt, released the same year.

As mentioned upthread though, Strangers When We Meet feels utterly out of place, and messes up the entire mood of the album. The segue before makes it sound like it's about Leon and Ramona meeting years later, but it's far too upbeat for that - Leon was manipulated and persuaded into participating in a child murder, for heaven's sake.

I keep meaning to track down the Outside-era single of I Can't Read and tacking it onto the album in place of Strangers - it would make a far more fitting closer, both sonically and lyrically (Leon, used and abandoned by Ramona, and forever morally soiled, now finds himself unable to create art).

Favourite tracks? I Have Not Been to Oxford Town, No Control, We Prick You and especially Thru' These Architects Eyes.