Morrissey is as widely derided as he is worshipped - comes with the territory. He was just mocked mercilessly for his attempt at a sex scene in the novel he wrote. It was really bad.
I am stunned that folks are looking at Annie Lennox, Pet Shop Boys or The Smiths as other artists who are being compared to Bowie. I mean, I get it - they are huge Bowie disciples and had some hits. Morrissey has his cult, but his level of influence exists within Bowie’s shadow, IMHO. I believe that Bowie is regarded at a level or two above that - which is why I started the thread. But it is interested to see how different people come to their views on Bowie - he showed so many angles.
Since I loathe the man, I’ll field this one.
He writes horrible whiny lyrics and has a terrible singing voice. I can’t really stand to listen to anything he’s involved with. One of the worst hours in my life was being stranded in a dark dorm room after my roommate had fallen asleep listening to a Smith’s CD on shuffle, while I was tripping. Yes, I would have found the door knob faster if I wasn’t tripping, but that doesn’t excuse Morrisey’s sucking the whole time.
He’s pretty much a punch line to a joke that’s not very funny in the first place.
To compare his legacy to Bowie’s is silly when you think of it in these terms: If the larger public knows Morrisey’s work, it’s due to one song. It’s the guitar part that’s notable, not the vocals or lyrics, and that’s just about it. His solo career would not have hit your radar if you didn’t seek it out.
Bowie, on the other hand had about a decade and a half of hits, and helped change the larger direction of music several times. His image has been adopted as the head villain in a cartoon and as Lucifer and a superhero in separate comic books. It’s actually kind of hard to be at all observant of pop culture have avoided any reference to bowie.
It’s going to sound a bit weird, as I do like a fair few bands he’s influenced, but I can’t stand his singing style, I dislike his lyrics which often seem to be masking his insecurity with mockery and a smug sense of superiority, and his whole persona - the foppish, coy asexuality and militant veganism - just annoy the hell out of me. And as Wordman says, I’m far from alone in these views.
It’s probably worse because he so clearly has talent - it’s what he writes, not how he writes it that I dislike, and he has a technically good voice, and if I liked the rest the persona probably wouldn’t bother me.
Also he’s influenced hundreds of crap, whiny, inexplicably popular indie bands.
As for the idea that Bowie only has 5 well known songs, that’s simply not the case here in the UK, among quite a large proportion of the population anyway. I’d expect the average person could name more Bowie songs than Eagles songs.
I think this is very interesting, but not completely germaine to the issue of Bowie being remembered 100 years from now. In may cases, “most popular” does not equal “most likely to be remembered”. We know plenty of authors and playwrights from the 19th century, but not these ones.
In 1969, the top single was “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies. I am very familiar with that song, but would bet that there are a huge number of posters here, less than 50 years after the fact, that are not. Let me be clear that I am not completely disagreeing with you. I think that the chances of Bowie being much listened to in the year 2169 are small, but the chances of Space Oddity being listened to are a whole lot higher than the chances of “Sugar, Sugar” being listened to.
In my limited exposure to The Smiths, the main thing that grates on me is his “Sing any dumb line twice in a row and it becomes a song lyric” approach to songwriting.
You know, the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether it’s not one of those pesky America/Rest of the World thing like football :D.
I’d be stunned if anyone over 30 told me they had no idea who Bowie was. Stunned. Heck, my grandmother, who passed away at age 90, knew perfectly well who he was and could recognize his songs.
With the other two, not so much, especially Morrissey.
Bowie had a total available certified sales of 26.8 million (estimated: 100 million). That’s only slightly less than The Beach Boys and more than The Who and The Doors, to stick with classic rock acts. I’d be curious to know what you think of them.
The idea that the Pet Shop Boys, Morrissey or Annie Lennox could be considered comparable to Bowie in any metric frankly boggles my mind.
Classic rock is itself 50 years old. And it is still alive with listeners of all ages. Any sign that it is going away anytime?
The media landscape has not existed in any 150 year cycle before, so any insights we have are just projections of our own biases.
Bowie is not the peer of those people who came after him in the new wave. This is an example of looking backwards through a telescope. Bowie actually affected the vocabulary of musicians so that those guys could have their hit.
Bowies competition was the Stones, Zeppelin, Floyd, Steely Dan etc.
Saw this on the A.V.Club - a UK-centric view of how folks in the punk world viewed Bowie. In short, with a few exceptions, they were fans and influenced by him, and saw his approach to Glam as opening doors they stepped through. Heck, Steve Jones ripped off Bowie’s gear to use for the Sex Pistols!
All of this is something that Annie Lennox, Morrissey or the Pet Shop boys were on the other side of - they all came after Bowie had influenced punk, which was then fracturing into Punk, Post-Punk, New Wave, New Romantic, etc…and they were in and amongst those next-gen genres.
… but that’s the problem with Bowie. Very largely he influenced style. He influenced music, but not so much.
In the long term, his style will have been forgotten and his music (while great) simply isn’t distinctive or groundbreaking enough to be remembered or influential.
I think his musical influence and prescience would have to be among the very best of all the rockers. The style was his charisma while he was making that music. A musical artistic reinvention.
Can you tell me someone who was out advancing Bowie musically at the time…
And say a name who has influenced more types of music over that time. period to be remembered?
I haven’t read all of this thread since posted in it but I thought I’d toss something in: A few years back I watched a Bowie documentary (it might even been part of 20 Feet From Stardom). I was amazed at how much of his genius wasn’t so much his genius, dirctly, but how good he was at collaborating with other artists. In short, when there was a sound he wanted, he know which studio musician to call in to play an instrument or who he needed to have produce his album. As much as I absolutely love David Bowie (and always will), it did take a little bit of the magic away. If he wasn’t a musician, I bet he would have made an amazing producer.
Secondly, I decided that now would be a good time to listen to each and every album, beginning to end. I had no idea how much music he cranked out. He’s got 27 studio albums, plus various side projects. It’s going to take me months to work though all that.
I am way old and have never heard anything by the Velvet Underground or Morrissey. (On the other end of the spectrum, ‘Sugar Sugar’ by the Archies is one of my all time favorite songs. I love it.) There is a vast middle ground encompassing many many bands and groups and singers.
Joey P - the fact that he knew how he wanted things to sound, and made that sound happen is everything in an artist. You say it takes away some of the magic; I feel his mastery in the studio and his ability to collaborate increases his importance and impact as an artist.
Coming back to say that I was up early enough to watch this just now before the world got moving. Wow - that was wonderful. A track-by-track walk through by Bowie’s longtime producer collaborator, Tony Visconti, followed by Bowie singing the song, looking like the perfect Anime character, standing still but fraught with emotion.
The track-by-track stuff is wonderful inside baseball. I especially loved how he builds up the pieces including all of the soundscape guitar and synth tracks. But the coolest bits where the discussion of the tambourine (a slight aside about how the track is essential to propel the song along, add towards the end to keep it moving. Once you hear that, you realize how true it is - that’s masterclass sound design). Also, the story about how he “gated” three mics at various distances away from Bowie, who would trigger them by how loud he sang. Done that way because they were out of tracks, it shows how conscious they were of the contrast between intimate statements and emotional passion. Wow.
I picked up the issue of Rolling Stone I just saw - Bowie on the cover, with nothing but the title, like they did with Lou Reed. Two good articles on his career and his impact, and some remembrances from Mick Jagger, Trent Reznor, Iggy and Bono.
Glenn Frey was not on the cover, but was given a wonderful, loving tribute by Cameron Crowe up at the front - about a page.
I would guess that 80% of the disproportionate coverage was due to timing - Frey died a few days later, closer to their publication date. But the difference was jarring.
Saw this - really good. Love how it assembled archival footage and its focus on his musicality. The inside-baseball comments my folks like Rick Wakeman on keyboards or how he approached structuring backing vocals with Luther Vandross were very cool.
