25. Never Let Me Down (1987)

Yes, even the very greatest artists release a few stinkers in their careers. Never Let Me Down was the nadir of a creatively barren period that struck Bowie after he had achieved immense fame and wealth in the early 1980s with Let’s Dance. Poorly received by fans and critics, reaching a lowly #34 in the States and missing the Top Five in Britain, it seemed to want to blend all the previous artistic iterations of Bowie together. However, the tracks themselves were garish and over-produced, leaving an unfocussed and incoherent mess.

Although the accompanying Glass Spider Tour was visually ambitious and continued to see him rake in the money, few fans remember this period with any fondness. Bowie himself quickly distanced himself from Never Let Me Down, ruing his personal aimlessness and self-doubt at the time of its recording, partly due to him being about to turn 40. While he has expressed fondness for the actual songs it contained, he hated the production. (LISTEN)

In his own words: “Never Let Me Down had good songs that I mistreated. I didn’t really apply myself. I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to be doing.”

Highlights: ‘Time Will Crawl’

24. David Bowie (1967)

Not really a ‘Bowie album’ at all, his 1967 self-titled debut is a collectors-only item in Bowie’s impressive back catalogue, for the curious only. David Bowie is a world away from the kind of music for which he would become famous just five years later, a collection of largely generic entertainment-lite songs that already felt outdated in the Summer of Love. His manager at the time, Ken Pitt, wanted him to become an ‘all-round entertainer’ rather than a ‘rock star’ – hence the rather whimsical, cabaret feel of the record.

While it’s possible to hear Bowie’s talent in embryonic form on the occasional track like ‘Love You Till Tuesday’, his debut really tells us nothing in retrospect. Rather, it’s the sound of plain old David Jones with his guitar, spreading in all different directions but unsure of which one to travel in – a listener only accustomed to his ‘70s output will find David Bowie either shocking or cloyingly quaint, his diction over-enunciated and twee. Its commercial failure cost Bowie his first recording contract with Deram, who dropped him in 1968. It left him cast adrift for quite a while, but he used the time to explore other art forms and media. (LISTEN)

In his own words: “Aargh, that Anthony Newley stuff, how cringe-y. No, I haven’t much to say about that in its favour… Musically, it’s quite bizarre. I don’t know where I was at.”

Highlights: ‘Love You Till Tuesday’

23. Tonight (1984)

Having achieved worldwide fame and fortune with Let’s Dance the previous year, Bowie didn’t quite seem to know what to do with himself; the quotation about Alexander The Great’s weeping “for there were no more worlds to conquer” leaps to mind when listening to Tonight. Consisting mainly of cover versions – including a singularly dreadful take on ‘God Only Knows’ – it was uninspired more than anything else. It was also rushed, written and recorded in just a month following the end of the Serious Moonlight Tour, and Bowie himself played no instruments, delegating that responsibility entirely to his band.

The album’s producer, Hugh Padgham, even admitted at the time that Tonight was less innovative than previous Bowie records, and it shows. Despite a brace of pretty decent originals in the shape of ‘Loving The Alien’ and ‘Blue Jean’, the process and execution on the record just seems tired. While it can’t have done his good friend Iggy Pop’s bank balance any harm – three of the nine tracks were covers of his songs! – Tonight broke a run of consecutive dazzling Bowie albums that stretched back 11 years. (LISTEN)

In his own words: “There’s stuff on [the album] that I could really kick myself about… my lack of interest in my own work was really becoming transparent.”

Highlights: ‘Loving The Alien’

22. hours… (1999)

A return to a more orthodox, guitar-based sound following the bold experimentation of 1. Outside and Earthling, Bowie’s 21^st album hours… promised much but delivered little. His final collaboration with long-term creative foil Reeves Gabrels (who went back to the Tin Machine days), it was recorded at the same time as an instrumental soundtrack for the Dreamcast game ‘Omikron: The Nomad Soul’.

Many fans found the songs, with the exception of a few spirited rockers like ‘Seven’ and ‘Survive’, to be disappointing and forgettable, languishing too much in its own sense of mellow restfulness. The most notable aspect of hours… was his pioneering use of the internet and his own site BowieNet as a platform not only to promote the album, but as a means of allowing his fanbase to interact with him. It is also in the record books as the first album by a major artist to be available to download before its physical release – Bowie’s visionary skills were still with him in his mid-fifties. (LISTEN)

In his own words: “This album was me trying to capture the idea of songs for my generation. So what I had to do was sink into a situation psychologically that was less than happy with life, which in my case is not true. I had to create the situations.”

Highlights: ‘Seven’

21. Pin Ups (1973)

An album of cover versions rush-recorded and released at the end of 1973 to satisfy the ravenous demand from the British public for all things Bowie post-Ziggy, Pin Ups was disappointing both as a Bowie record and on its own terms. Primarily, this is because it is filled almost entirely with uninventive, flat-track versions of pop hits of the ‘60s – two covers each of The Who, The Yardbirds and The Pretty Things and one Kinks song. Any insightful choices that there were, such as Pink Floyd’s ‘See Emily Play’ that offered a glimpse at Bowie’s formative musical influences, were let down by indifferent execution.

A glittering version of ‘Sorrow’, originally by The Merseys, is the one real standout, while a cover of ‘White Light/White Heat’ by The Velvet Underground, perhaps Bowie’s most important influence of all, was recorded but left off altogether. While it raced to Number 1 in the UK charts, Pin Ups registers as the only inessential moment of Bowie’s legendary 1970s output, and was a missed opportunity for listeners to really look behind his image and at the man himself. Furthermore, his ‘Spiders’ band was falling apart – Woody Woodmansey had already left, and it would be Mick Ronson and Trevor Bolder’s last stand. (LISTEN)

Highlights: ‘Sorrow’