![]() ![]() In the liner notes, a member of Duran Duran is thanked for the loan of a drum machine, and that speaks volumes about the production Blah Blah Blah is slick in a very '80s way, dominated by preprogrammed percussion and swirling keyboards. Like The Idiot, Blah Blah Blah was heavily influenced by Bowie's input however, while The Idiot was made by a man creating intelligent and ambitious art rock, Blah Blah Blah is the work of a popmeister looking for hits and not afraid to sound cheesy about it. David Bowie offered to help, and together they came up with Blah Blah Blah, the most calculatedly commercial album of Iggy's career. Wisely realizing he was running out of second chances, Iggy decided to make the most of his good fortune he steered clear of drugs, learned to cook his own meals, started putting money in the bank, and used his savings to bankroll a new album. Bowie recorded "China Girl," a song Bowie and Pop co-wrote, for his album Let's Dance, earning Iggy some large (and much-needed) royalty checks. It pales in comparison to the original but it’s better than anything that features Mickey Rourke rapping on it.In 1983, Iggy Pop's career was in shambles, but an unexpected windfall arrived thanks to Iggy's frequent benefactor David Bowie. This is the last album that Iggy and Bowie will make together.īowie’s following studio album Never Let Me Down (1987) features a cover of Bang Bang from Iggy’s Party (1981). Also, Cry for Love (one of the three songs co-written with Jones), is a killer track. However Iggy feels about it, Blah-Blah-Blah is a solid album and his most commercially successful. Those boys included, not coincidentally, the Sales brothers-rhythm section from the Lust for Life (1977) album. For those that don’t know, Tin Machine was Bowie’s attempt to shed his popstar skin to become one of the boys. Still, the tracks credited with Bowie sound like what he will do in future with Tin Machine (1988-1992). It’s even got Steve Jones on it, how punk is that? Mind you, the tracks written with Jones don’t sound anything like the Sex Pistols. It’s sound is a pop album with some kind of punk rock edge. ![]() ![]() The most well-known song on here is the re-worked Johnny O’Keefe track Real Wild Child (Wild One). Half of the album is written with or by Bowie. Pin Ups was a collection of covers from 1973 released to cash in on the success of Aladdin Sane. …I thought it a kind of violent effort at a kind of Pin Ups. The latter includes Iggy on vocals and is very much a signal of what Bowie’s next studio album will sound like.Īn album with less than fifty percent new material, Bowie said of Tonight: With a heavy horn rhythm section, this track feels very of its time but solid, nonetheless. The former rolls along just like its namesake. Two original tracks are credited to the pair: Tumble and Twirl and Dancing with the Big Boys. For some reason, Bowie gives this a reggae twist as well. The original is a decent soul-influenced track that wouldn’t feel too out of place on Bowie’s Young Americans (1975). The third Iggy Pop cover present is Don’t Look Down from New Values (1979), his first solo record without Bowie. Perhaps if Bowie had delivered his version a few years earlier, it could have sounded better than it does here. Iggy’s 1977 version sounds very much like a precursor to what Bowie ends up doing on Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (1980). Neighborhood Threat, also from Lust For Life, makes the cut as well. However, including Tonight, Iggy is credited on five of the nine tracks with this mess of an album.ĭon’t get me wrong, Blue Jean (with its mini-film Jazzin’ For Blue Jean by Julien Temple) is a classic pop song and Loving the Alien Doesn’t fair too badly either, but these two tracks show little to no evidence of input from Iggy.įor the title track, Bowie brought in Tina Tuner to duet with on this neutered (drug references removed) reggae version of Iggy’s song, and it sounds as bad as it looks on paper, believe me. Iggy’s presence on this record is not comparable to that of Bowie on the Iggy Pop records. ![]() Tonight from 1984 is Bowie’s follow-up to the commercial success of Let’s Dance (1983). In this two-part series, I look at every album that, for better or worse, rock icons David Bowie and Iggy Pop share credits. Music review / Article – by Morgan Thistlethwaite ![]()
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