15. Heathen (2002)

Considering the huge outpourings of tributes that were triggered by his death last January, it’s often easy to forget that Bowie’s popular legacy was far from secure throughout most of the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Tonight and Never Let Me Down had been pretty dismal, while the Tin Machine and experimental albums of the nineties, while well-received, had proved divisive among his old fanbase. What Heathen did so spectacularly was to remind everybody of why Bowie was so revered in the first place, consisting of twelve simple but disarmingly imaginative pop songs of a very individual bent. Significantly, it saw him collaborate with his legendary producer Tony Visconti for the first time in over 20 years.

Rising out of the ashes of an abandoned studio project known as Toy, which would have seen him revive a number of his lesser-known ‘60s tracks alongside new originals, Heathen saw Bowie achieve a level of direct connection between artist and listener that his ‘90s output had arguably lacked. Tracks such as ‘Slow Burn’ and ‘A Better Future’ saw him tackle the general post-9/11 sense of paranoia and fear of the future that had enshrouded Western society. It received the first of two Mercury Music Prize nominations that Bowie would receive in his career – the other, posthumously, was Blackstar. More importantly, it saw his general popularity rally, particularly in America, where Heathen became his highest-charting record in the two decades since Let’s Dance. (LISTEN)

In his own words:  “It was written as a deeply questioning album. Of course, it had one foot astride that awful event in September. So that was quite a traumatic album to finish. This one hints at that, but it’s not really trying to resolve any trauma. [September 11^th] did affect me and my family very much. We live down here.”

Highlights: ‘Everyone Says ‘Hi’’; ‘Slow Burn’; ‘A Better Future’

14. Lodger (1979)

Completing the famous ‘Berlin trilogy’ recorded with Brian Eno, Lodger is one of the most misunderstood records in Bowie’s catalogue. Containing no instrumentals (unlike Low and “Heroes”) and actually recorded in Switzerland and New York City, it was considered as a partial return to ‘pop’ following the fearless European experimentation of its predecessors, accompanied as it was by three of Bowie’s most underrated singles (‘Boys Keep Swinging’, ‘DJ’, ‘Look Back In Anger’).

However, it was released at a time when new-wave and electronic artists influenced by Bowie, such as Gary Numan and David Byrne, were beginning to outflank him and make him look, ever so slightly, like yesterday’s man at the end of a decade he had done so much to define. Lodger is the sound of a 32 year old man, in the middle of a divorce and trying to suppress his drug addiction, dropping the mask for the first time and letting his listening public see him as a real person. There’s no alter ego here, no myths of how it came to be, just ‘a David Bowie album’.

The one strand of familiarity from Lodger’s two predecessors was the continued use of Eno’s ‘Oblique Strategies’ techniques during recording. Experiments on the album included using old tunes played backwards, employing identical chord sequences for different songs, and having the band swap instruments (for ‘Boys Keep Swinging’), but Bowie’s new creative partner Adrian Belew observed that Eno and Bowie’s working relationship had run its course by this point.

Not that Lodger sounds uninspired – far from it – but it’s simply the least lustrous of the Eno triptych. It also feels very much like the odd one out: its spiritual home is the tight, winding streets of North African cities, rather than the wide open strasses of Berlin in the winter-time. Winding, complex polyrhythms and Eastern scales replaced the stern, teutonic soundscapes of Low, and it made for some his most unusual compositions yet and presaged the popularity of world music. Reviews were indifferent upon its release, but time has been kind to Lodger, and critics now consider it to be one of Bowie’s most fascinating and prescient works. (LISTEN)

In his own words: [On his relationship with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti] “We’ve slightly changed our opinions about music and what we should be doing… …I think Tony and I would both agree that we didn’t take enough care mixing [it].”

Highlights: ‘Boys Keep Swinging’; ‘Look Back In Anger’; ‘African Night Flight’

13. Let’s Dance (1983)

The commercial zenith of Bowie’s vast and multi-faceted career, the multi-platinum success of Let’s Dance transformed him from an established artist into an internationally renowned superstar. Although he had experienced success on many occasions before, that success had varied and been localised in various parts of the globe over the previous decade. Only in 1983, with his 15^th studio album, did he finally conquer the world. Accompanied by the wildly popular Serious Moonlight world tour, which lasted six months, and two utterly ubiquitous singles in ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Modern Love’ that dominated MTV, Bowie was the biggest pop star on Earth for a short time.

Produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers with an explicit brief to make a “commercially buoyant” album, having just signed to EMI for an eye-watering $17.5 million, every effort was made to make Let’s Dance as accessible as possible. The talented Stevie Ray Vaughan, who would imminently find fame in a solo career, played lead guitar and, unusually, Bowie didn’t play a single instrument on the record.

While long-time fans, ever protective of their idol, flinched at the massive success it achieved, Let’s Dance is simply a different kind of great Bowie record, allowing him to access a mainstream audience for arguably the first time in his career, as his image from this time is of a plain, unthreatening, make-up-and-costume-free entertainer rather than the masks and alter-egos of his past. Rather than subverting the mainstream, Bowie was seeking to supplant himself directly into it.

The echoing funk guitars and horns and booming, gated drums of the title track made it an immortal dancefloor classic, while most of the rest of the album pretty successfully achieved its aim of making a shiny, synthesised post-disco dance music, informed by soul and the new sub-genre of the New Romantics whose practitioners were, ironically, influenced by Bowie himself. While it is front-loaded by three colossal hits, causing the second half to feel lightweight by comparison, Let’s Dance is an enduring and enjoyable listen. (LISTEN)

In his own words: “At the time, Let’s Dance was not mainstream. It was virtually a new kind of hybrid, using blues-rock guitar against a dance format. There wasn’t anything else that really quite sounded like that at the time. So it only seems commercial in hindsight because it sold so many [copies]. It was great in its way, but it put me in a real corner in that it fucked with my integrity… [it] was a good record, but it was only meant as a one-off project.”

Highlights: ‘Let’s Dance’; ‘Modern Love’; ‘Cat People (Putting Out Fire)’

12. Diamond Dogs (1974)

After the breakthrough success of Ziggy and Aladdin Sane, and having killed off The Spiders From Mars the previous year, Bowie was in need of a new, eye-catching conceit if he was to retain his place at rock’s top table. The result was Diamond Dogs, which was conceived of as a musical adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four matched with a wildly ambitious stage show for the accompanying tour. While neither quite came to fruition, you hear the dystopian theme running through the vein-pumping title track, plus tell-tale songs like ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’.

Significantly, it saw the influence of soul music creeping into his work for the first time. The gorgeous ‘Sweet Thing’, turned into suite of tracks with ‘Candidate’ and a reprise, saw Bowie make the effort to move on artistically, using William Burrough’s ‘cut-up’ technique of lyric writing for the first time in his career. The glam-trash of ‘Rebel Rebel’ was a dazzling retread of the glam-rock of his last two records, letting the public know that the spirit of Ziggy still lived. Ideas are explored fearlessly and, while they don’t always work, an overall theme of decadence and dark sense of dread infuses Diamond Dogs and just about makes it hang together.

Diamond Dogs ultimately just about deserves its reputation among Bowie’s true greats, but it’s best understood as a bridge between two eras of his career, a snapshot of him transforming from a glam-rock artist into the blue-eyed soul of Young Americans. While its sonic and thematic imperfections are obvious, it’s undeniably full of character, with its bleak, Clockwork Orange-esque vision of the post-sixties world a clear precursor to the nihilism of punk that was just around the corner. (LISTEN)

In his own words: “A very political album. My protest… more me than anything I’ve done previously.”

On the album’s concept: “there were these gangs of squeaking, roller-skating, vicious hoods, with Bowie knives and furs on, and they were all skinny because they hadn’t eaten enough, and they all had funny-coloured hair. In a way it was a precursor to the punk thing.”

Highlights: ‘Diamond Dogs’; ‘Sweet Thing’; ‘1984’

11. The Next Day (2013)

After very nearly a whole decade of complete silence, David Bowie suddenly announced his return to music in January 2013 in a surprise announcement that cleverly saw him embrace the new possibilities offered by social media. An album concerned with the past, but which wasn’t nostalgic in any way, The Next Day didn’t seek to reinvent Bowie. Rather, it drew inspiration from his legacy and breathed new life into it, indirectly referencing it through subtle audio and visual clues, and made people realise in a rush of memory just how much of an impact Bowie had had on Western culture in general.

The concurrent ‘David Bowie Is…’ exhibition at London’s V&A museum; the gentle references to his Berlin years in lead single ‘Where Are We Now?’; even the artwork’s reference to his 1977 album “Heroes” with a plain white block placed in front of it and plain black text within… It all suggested an album aware of its presence within a wider body of work, determined to honour that legacy but simultaneously stand apart from it.

The Next Day initially drew some absolutely amazing reviews, with one breathlessly calling it his “strongest work to date” (steady…), but four years of distance have given some proper perspective. The album’s symbolic significance outweighs that of its musical content, but the variety contained within The Next Day gets more remarkable with each listen. The mournful, soulful ‘Love Is Lost’ is an enduring high-point, with a contemporary ‘Hello Steve Reich’ remix by James Murphy re-tooling it elegantly. Elsewhere, the mood moving from solemn (‘Where Are We Now?’) to dignified, statesman-like rock (‘Dancing Out In Space’). ‘If You Can See Me’s frenetic drumming almost recalls the junglism of Earthling. Few other rock legends have put out anything even half as good as The Next Day in their sixties, put it that way. (LISTEN)

In his own words: Bowie famously didn’t give any interviews about The Next Day, though he did provide a 42-word ‘flow diagram’ to one tenacious journalist, which included phrases like “burial”, “origin” and “identity”. Make of that what you will…

Highlights: ‘Where Are We Now?’; ‘Love Is Lost’; ‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’