David Bowie Aladdin Sane Poll. Pick Your Favourites & Discuss.

You can't polish a turd

 

UK charts from May 1973.

 

Getting ready for the usual Stones cover forum critique

Don't play the album a lot, but it's great when I do (WG RCA). Artwork is beyond iconic, heard The Jean Genie way too many times, but Drive-in Saturday is always brilliant.

 

I rank this below Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust but it's still an amazing work. Iconic album cover and Mick Ronson just destroys everything in his path with his heavy riffs. Worth the price of admission for Panic in Detroit alone. The Prettiest Star isn't one of my favorite Bowie songs but Ronson saves it for me unlike the Stones cover which is just flat out awful.

 

The standout tracks on this album to me are "Aladdin Sane", "Panic In Detroit", "Cracked Actor" and "The Jean Genie".

I also voted for "Watch That Man", "Drive-In Saturday Night" and "Let's Spend The Night Together", which are all second-tier album tracks. (imo)

In the overall hierarchy of Bowie's 70's albums, I rank Aladdin Sane third best after Ziggy and Young Americans -- and just ahead of StationToStation and Diamond Dogs.

Naturally I re-sequenced the album for maximum enjoyment:

Side 1
Aladdin Sane
Panic In Detroit
Cracked Actor
The Jean Genie
Watch That Man

Side 2
Let's Spend The Night Together
Drive-In Saturday Night
Time
Lady Grinning Soul
The Prettiest Star

 

What an awesomely bizarre UK album chart in 1973--Bowie, Roxy, Zeppelin, Alice, Pink Floyd, Beatles and the Clockwork Orange soundtrack, all in the top 20.

I am a bit surprised to see Dark Side Of The Moon down at 12th in the seventh week of release.

 

Three great albums in a row: Hunky; Ziggy; Aladdin. I rate all the tracks, even the Stones cover. The artwork is FAB.

 

Don’t worry. DSOTM would rally. It stayed on the charts for donkey’s years.

Rock fans would kill for a top 10 albums chart like that today.

 

IN HS, it was such a scandal--the chorus of Cracked Actor. A Catholic school girl I knew called the song "**** Baby ****" and would turn red when she said it. I just loved Ronno in major Jeff beck mode throughout. The Bo Diddley beat of Detroit was probably my #2. The R&B touches of the backing singers was very cool. And I loved the deconstruction of the Stones song. I get it that the songs was so polite in the music and so 'corrupting' in the lyrics and it works as the two sides conflict. This version just goes for the jugular. The piano, the key instrument in the Stones version, is there at the beginning , doing some kind of off key avant garde melodies. It shows that what is coming will either send you running or get you dancing. The end talking didn't put me off, cause once again Ronno is flying.

 

There's a reason for everything

Is Drive-In Saturday Bowie's least known big hit?

 

Not to mention the word ‘wanking’ in Time... Pretty much stopped that song getting any airplay in the UK.

 

Apparently Bowie even did barcodes ten years earlier than everybody else!

 

Possibly.. He had so many hits in the UK in 1973 and DIS does seem to be the one people forget about.

Yet most of them recall The Laughing Gnome which made #6 that year!

 

He should have rerecorded Gnome and put that on the album instead of The Stones cover

 

My first Bowie album and my favorite of his, so this one is very special for me. Bought it in the late summer of 73. I love them all, but if I had to pick a top 5 it would be:

Drive In Saturday
Watch That Man
Time
Aladdin Sane
Cracked Actor

 

The title track has always been my favorite, and the one that got me hooked on this album.
This is one of my favorite Bowie albums...I would at times say it is the one. No, I don’t care for The Stones cover...but that’s really the only misstep on the album IMO. Great cover. All the original pressings I’ve found still have the fan club send away.

 

Bought mine summer of '73, carried my Canadian copy proudly under my arms. Got a few stares alright.

 

I clicked all except the Stones cover (which I don't hate, I just like it least). I love this record, I play it all the time.

 

I think the Stones cover actually works a lot better in the context of the live Spiders show, along with the Velvets cover "White Light / White Heat".

I wish they had released a really good-sounding live Ziggy & The Spiders album during this era, something with better sound than the Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture soundtrack has.

 

Always thought bOwIe was mad for dumping the spiders. Just imagine how Diamond Dogs would have sounded with them in the studio, more bollocks than dystopian. I would have accepted the dogs bollocks in sound myself.

 

I like every track on the album, and the cover is one of the best ever. Bowie at the top of his game, and amazingly, the best was yet to come, in the form of Station To Station, Low, and “Heroes”.

 

great album, picked most of them

 

What a great album! Overall not as consistent as Ziggy (on Aladdin Sane I don't get the title track, the cover song is unnecessary, and Jean Geanie is a trifle) but the best songs on Aladdin Sane, like Panic in Detroit, Time, and Watch That Man, are simply on another level. Also, this album sounds great... unlike Ziggy (and almost everything else from the Bowie discography) it actually sounds like heavy rock n roll. I especially like the mix on Watch That Man, with the buried vocals and blazing guitars.

 

It would be perfect if not for that awful Stones cover.

 

When I started buying his albums in the 1990s, this was the first one to disappoint me. Even then, there were songs I enjoyed but it didn’t work as an album in the way Ziggy or Hunky Dory did. It didn’t help that it was the only Rykodusc reissue without any bonus material but songs like Watch That Man and Panic In Detroit seemed ordinary in comparison to what had gone before and what was to follow. The piano ballads felt a little underpowered, too.

It’s grown on me now, but it’s still my least favourite of the classic Bowie albums though, paradoxically, it has my favourite sleeve art of any album.