A data point in my favour!
Bowie - not close for me, although it is a bit apples and oranges. You could make an argument for David Bowie as the inventor of modern pop music, no one is as influential. His creative peak lasted a decade - he is THE quintissential Mr 1970s, and then he was done. So I guess the fact he’s not done anything of quality for two decades would need to be weighed up, but his peak years are just in a different game to anything the Boss has achieved.
I’m a fan of Bruce, much more than Bowie in fact, but I can’t argue this one in his favour. The Boss is more consistent in his output - if both released albums tomorrow I’d be 99% certain that Bowie’s would be garbage, and Bruce’s would be at least pretty good. He’s also got a lot of integrity as an artist (besides his personal qualities) - in a genre well known for geriatric performers phoning it in, Bruce remains creative and will experiment (albeit within the fairly narrow parameters of his music). The 90s were a terrible period for him, creatively, and he showed his class to come back from that.
Still, with all that said, the entire 80s / 90s pop music edifice is built on Ziggy Stardust / Aladdin Sane / Low / Heroes etc so there’s no real comparison in terms of influence and originality. Bowie’s cover of ‘Hard to be a Saint’ did suck, though.
Sorry, it’s 3 decades of musical suck from Bowie, not 2. Pretty poor, but still.
Criticizing Springsteen for only having one persona is like criticizing Jane Austen for only writing about country life in early 19th Century England. It’s missing the point.
Persoanlly, while I like Bowie a lot, I choose the Boss. Not only did I grow up on his music (both my parents are from Jersey), I think he has the more impressive body of work. His vocal shortcomings are more than made up by the strength of his emotion, in which I believe he literally has no peer.
Come on! Scary Monsters was great!
(In all seriousness, his last two albums are supposed to be very good, though I haven’t heard them myself.)
Not even close, Mr. Jones by a mile.
Unclviny
Another thing Bowie has in his favour is he appeared in Labyrinth as the Goblin King, and in The Prestige as Nikolai Tesla. Springsteen hasn’t done bugger all.
He also played The Elephant Man! You can’t beat that!
I’ve never seen Bowie in concert, so I really can’t compare them, but Bruce, live, with the E Street Band…it’s just phenomenal. And even at 60, his energy and engagement with his fans old and young is astounding.
One of my personal nightmare scenarios is that one day I’ll hit it off with an ideal fellow, only to learn he’s a huge Springsteen fan. Could I overcome my distaste for The Boss to be otherwise-happily coupled? Honestly, I don’t know…
Bowie, by the distance from The Castro to West Berlin and back.
No vote. Pointless question. Which do you prefer chocolate or the Shelby Mustang?
Bowie may be a better musician technically, but (with the exception of Young Americans) his songs generally leave me cold.
Bruce manages to hit me in the gut more often than not.
This is the best of these threads yet. I simply cannot pick one. For artists, I factor in things like influence, innovation, creativity, songwriting, performance, production, etc.–and I filter them through the Stratometer to determine which artist ultimately matters most, a highly scientific process (using the Force and my Spider-sense) that eliminates any “apples to oranges” issues. Hank Williams versus Madonna? Easy! I can almost always pick somebody. But I just can’t tip the scales on this one.
Great question. Hmm…
Bowie by a mile. While we’re at it he was Pontius Pilate in “Last Temptation of Christ”.
True. As singers go, Bowie is a much better actor.
Well, the Thin White Duke’s been semi-retired for a few years while the Boss is still actively touring and putting out records so I guess he wins in that regard. But in other respects you can probably guess where my loyalties lie.
Hmmph. As has previously been mentioned, “Scary Monsters” was a great album, “Under Pressure” was a single that still has legs (although I’m not sure how much he had to do with that creatively), and “Let’s Dance,” like it or not (and I’m one of them what does), was a monster hit. The rest of the '80s were rather dismal, but he made a strong creative (if not commercial) comeback in the '90s.
Well, to each his own. I’d be afraid Bowie’s might be garbage, but hopeful it would be something stunning, whereas I’d be almost positive Springsteen’s would be… pretty good. That to me makes Bowie a much more interesting artist.
But as others have mentioned, music is only part of Bowie’s appeal. He’s created personas to build his albums and stage shows around, and discarded them before they got boring. He’s a visual artist, or at least savvy enough to have visual artists working for him. He’s made a few interesting film appearances (and some real stinkers. Bowie was an early adapter when it came to using the Internet as a means of distribution, promotion, and interaction with fans, beyond posting biographical notes and an online shopping cart.
He even helped pioneer the securitization of intellectual property rights, and we all know how much our lives have been improved by that!
At least we can agree on the essentials!
It’s hard to be a saint when you’re just a BOW-ieee out on the street!
Not interested in Springsteen at all. “Droning” is a good way to describe his singing, all right.
This is a really good one. I’m a huge fan of both. I think that Springsteen is definitely more consistent; Bowie wrote and recorded a much greater percentage of terrible songs IMO. I’m not a big fan of Bruce’s post-E Street LA Albums, although looking over the Bowie discography I’m surprised to see there aren’t as many albums I’d dismiss outright as I’d have thought. * Tonight*, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let You Down, and the Tin Machine albums are rubbish, but everything else is at least worth a listen.
I also must take issue with the characterizations of Springsteen as a one-trick pony; I feel he reinvented himself several times in his career. More subtly than Bowie (but then Bowie’s personas were never big on subtlety). The Asbury Park dreamer of Born to Run, the muscular working class hero of Born in the USA, the quieter more country/Guthrie-influenced folksinger of Nebraska and the later acoustic records, the boisterous hootenany spirit of We Shall Overcome; growing up listening to Bruce I always felt like he was constantly reinventing himself, in much the same way as Bowie.
In the end, I love Bowie, but I gotta give it to Sprinsteen by a nose, not least for his lack of coked-up support of fascism.
[quote=“santosvega, post:38, topic:546724”]
and the Tin Machine albums are rubbish
[QUOTE]
Tin Machine is AWESOME!, pistols at dawn, sir. And Bruce reinventing himself? from the working-class Jersey-boy to the working-class Jersey-boy?, PLEASE!
Unclviny
Let’s get Bruce Springsteen to try and sing ‘Young Americans’ that song is lyrically one of the hardest to sing ever IMHO.
So yeah, Bowie all the way.