February
3rd marks the 25th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s 21st
studio album, Earthling (stylized as EART HL I NG) , which was issued on
this day in 1997. It’s an album which showed that, while Bowie was
celebrating half a century on this Earth, he was still able to move with
the times, though maybe not be as ahead of them as he’d been in the
past.
Earthling is often seen as Bowie’s “drum ’n’ bass” album, a
label that might be overstating the influence as there are actually
only three of the album’s nine original tracks which can be slotted into
that category. However it is, overall, a very electronic record. The
debate over how innovative it was at the time is something which
continues to divide historians and critics. By 1997, the DnB scene was
well established and waning, so it’s hard to credit the album as being
particularly “cutting edge”. At the very least, it’s an example of
Bowie indulging his passions of the times and giving them his own
personal stamp. Whether or not he was being “trendy”, it did manage to
get him some commercial attention, particularly with the success of
Little Wonder as a single and its accompanying video. In some ways it
was one of his most memorable singles since Blue Jean over a decade
earlier.
Structurally, Bowie considered the album much more
simplistic than the work he’d done on the previous LP, Outside. He'd
started working on Earthling on his laptop after the conclusion of the
Outside tour in a deliberate attempt to work more “electronically” and
without a guitar. The primary collaborator for this album was Reeves
Gabrels, who handled synths and programming along with guitar duties.
The album was recorded at Philip Glass’ Looking Glass studio in NYC,
mostly between August and October of 1996. In addition to the DnB
influence, there is a certain “industrial” edge to it, which is
exemplified by some of the remixes done by Nine Inch Nails head honcho,
Trent Reznor.
From my own perspective, I have to say that I was
mostly disconnected from Bowie’s work after Let’s Dance and didn’t
particularly pay attention to much of it until Blackstar came out and we
were all knocked sideways with the shock of his death on the heels of
its release. Of all the records he put out from the mid ‘80s until his
passing, Earthling was probably the one that I remember the most. I’ve
since done a lot of backtracking through his catalogue for this period
and, personally, find it one of the more enjoyable releases of that
decade. It’s not what many people consider “classic” Bowie, but it’s
still a jolly good record.
