Reality is David Bowie’s best

David Bowie has given up on change. There is nothing new to boast of in his latest album Reality. And that is big news because no other pop personality has mastered the art of reinvention the way he has. For one, he presents himself as plain David Bowie and not some new character he has created. If you must know, Madonna is a mere tyro compared to him because Bowie does not only change his appearance. He comes up with personas and the music or maybe I should say entire sensibilities to go with them. Think Aladin Sane, Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke and others. He has also been a folk troubadour, glam-rocker and soul balladeer at various periods in his music career.

He also made no effort to experiment with his music. Bowie, who has been around since the ’60s has dabbled in almost everything and in most instances, his work was even ahead of its time. His Space Oddity came out right before Neil Armstrong was to do his moonwalk in 1969. Rock, punk, disco, techno, ambient, name it and he has done it. He has worked with John Lennon Fame, Queen Under Pressure, Mick Jagger Dancing in the Streets, Tina Turner, Nine Inch Nails, producers Brian Eno, Nile Rodgers, Tony Visconti and others. If there was something to be expected out of a new Bowie album, it was something he has never done before.

This is not the case with Reality though. But come to think of it, that title is really a giveaway. Bowie has thrown away his masks and now faces the world as he really is. Here at last is reality in Reality. Nothing surreal or experimental here. This is just Bowie performing some of the best songs he has written accompanied by a real band wherein he plays lead guitar. We all thought he would never get around to doing something like this again. And I must say that the fact that he did is the biggest change of all.

Has age finally caught up with one of the most famous pop icons of all time? Bowie is now 56 years old. I do not think so. I’ve never heard him as energized as he sounds in this new album. Truth to tell, I believe that younger listeners will find the simplicity of Reality most appealing. The music is mostly guitar-driven rock with a beat that stays in your head and which gets better and better every time you listen to it. Save for the jazzy, bittersweet Bring Me the Disco King, it has songs you can sing to with the proper chorus, refrain and verse. As for those loyal Bowie fans who have seen his hair go from brown to blonde to orange to white etc., etc., why, he might be singing his songs to them.

"I’m screaming that I’m gonna be living on till the end of time, forever," he sings in Never Get Old. "She’ll turn the radio way up high, find a station playing sad, sad soul, just a little bit louder now," he says in She’ll Drive the Big Car. "All the pages that have turned, all the errors lift unlearned, but I’m the luckiest guy" goes The Loneliest Guy. And what about Bring Me the Disco King, which goes like this, "You promised me that the ending would be clear, you’d let me know when the time was now, don’t let me know when you’re opening the door, stab me in the dark, let me disappear…"

These plus New Killer Star, composed by Jonathan Richman, Pablo Picasso, Looking for Water, Days, Fall Dog Bombs the Moon, the title track Reality and Bowie’s own version of George Harrison’s Try Some, Buy Some, flow seamlessly from one track to another, creating various moods, all of them real.

Annie Lennox Triumphs

Into the West, performed by Annie Lennox for the soundtrack of The Return of the King, the final film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, won the Best Original Song trophy at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe Awards. Composed by Howard Shore, Fran Walsh and Lennox, the song bested other nominees composed by some of the biggest names in popular music today. Man of the Hour from Big Fish by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam; You Will Be My Ain True Love from Cold Mountain by Sting; Time Enough for Tears by Bono of U2 from In America and The Heart of Every Girl from Mona Lisa Smile by Elton John. Let us all wait and see how these will fare at the Academy Awards.