9. Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (1980)

The end of the ‘Berlin trilogy’ and the seventies might have posed an existential question to David Bowie, having been at the top of his game for so long that his crown was now being menaced by scores of new artists who had been inspired to make music by him. However, his response to the beginning of the eighties was so perfectly executed that it seemed totally effortless. An immaculate balance of studied, art-house cool and accessible, full-blooded songwriting, Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) was yet another classic Bowie record at a time when many of his old fans thought he had deserted pop for good.

Scored through with Robert Fripp’s corrosive blasts of arty electric guitar, the album’s signature sound more than any other, Scary Monsters is frequently regarded as Bowie’s last great album. In many ways, it belongs in the seventies – many of its songs were re-workings of ideas Bowie had had knocking around for nearly a decade (‘Scream Like A Baby’, for example, had been a song he had written in 1973 for his then-girlfriend called ‘I Am A Laser’), and the Pierrot costume he wore for the iconic ‘Ashes To Ashes’ video, recalled his early theatrical training with Lindsay Kemp. Even that song explicitly referred to Major Tom from ‘Space Oddity’, an 11 year old hit by 1980.

So, in many ways Scary Monsters is a blended encapsulation of all of his identity and musical experiments of the previous decade, while sounding hip and contemporary at the same time alongside the growing post-punk movement. While it doesn’t necessarily break new ground – even stand-out tracks like ‘Fashion’ and ‘Teenage Wildlife’ had their roots in musical territory that Bowie had touched on before – it was the last Bowie for some considerable time to sound truly fresh.

The fifth and final album to feature the rhythm section of Dennis Davis and George Murray, Scary Monsters was the end of an era for Bowie, a clearing-house exercise that saw him taking stock and drawing a line under the first act of his life. Signing to a new record label when he eventually returned with Let’s Dance, he would begin a new, simpler and less self-conscious age. (LISTEN)

In his own words: “More and more, I’m prepared to relinquish sales, as far as records go, by sticking to my guns about the kind of music I really wish to make… There are an awful lot of mistakes on that album that I went with, rather than cut them out. One tries as much as possible to put oneself on the line artistically.”

Highlights: ‘Up The Hill Backwards’; ‘Ashes To Ashes’; ‘Fashion’