David Bowie

The Next Day

This album is not David Bowie's first overtly nostalgic work, the first to reference his own career, nor the first to feature meditations on aging, but it repeats those tricks with immense style.

The Next Day is certainly his most engaging and intriguing since Outside. For now, that’s more than enough.

Bowie's most impassioned and convincing work in decades.

Parts of The Next Day are less predictable than I expected, and there are some really sweet, poignant moments that have stayed with me after a handful of listens.

The Next Day is a loud, thrilling, steamrollingly confident rock and roll album full of noise, energy, and words that--if as cryptic as ever they were--sound like they desperately need to be sung.

Another striking feature of The Next Day is how much it doesn’t sound like an old man trying to keep up with the times. There’s a confidence exhibited here that’s refreshing.

The Next Day is only a little better than its two predecessors and probably only Bowie’s best album since Outside, but that’s not to knock what is easily the best mainstream art pop record of recent times.

This album is, foremost, about songcraft. Rather than reinventing Bowie, it absorbs his past and moves it on, hungry for more.

It’s one of the year’s best albums, and a genuinely great work of unashamed pop music that finds a way to be adventurous.

It’s a challenging album, and not just because its tracks are a puzzle box — the mix is dense. Perhaps more than any of Bowie’s prior 23 records, this one is an art record. 

There's a feel to this album that sounds like it could only be created by one man, and that's David Bowie.

It’s happy to take the listener on sudden, unexpected, journeys but also to just be exactly what it is; a really great rock album from a man who knows a thing or two about writing really great rock albums.

The Next Day is an excellent record, that brings David Bowie back into the spotlights, but also introducing him to a new generation of listeners (myself included). This is an excellent record for newcomers to sink in and a great one for old fans, too.

On The Next Day, he hasn't only come to terms with his past-- he's making his old material work for his new material. 

A few tracks lack clear antecedents, and some simply lack cohesion, or at least enough melody to anchor them. But Day is also an excellent reminder that Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, and the lunatic who sang Christmas songs with Bing Crosby have been coexisting in the same brain for decades.

The bottom line is that The Next Day proves that Bowie, whoever he might be, is back, invigorating his listeners even as he stupefies them.

The Next Day neither enhances nor diminishes anything that came before, it's merely a sweet coda to a towering career.

The Next Day is not a comeback album, but it doesn’t particularly feel like an attempt at one. If anything, this may be one of Bowie’s few records that doesn’t feel like he’s trying to either set a trend or fit in with one. Instead, it feels like Bowie making music he wants to make regardless of how others may feel about.

Pop music is never a purely cerebral exercise, and despite its intriguing concept, The Next Day is woefully short on anything to sing along to.

If it is the mark of a satisfying album that you want to absorb every last note and reference, then The Next Day is a banquet, but one in which superfoods and gristle both feature.

The Next Day is a good latter-day Bowie record, worthy of at least a few listens, but since it's so evocative of his earlier, better work there's little reason not to put on Scary Monsters or Heroes instead.

The Next Day is an album that didn't need to be made.

Now he’s just an old fellow who is fighting against the current, and The Next Day is a brutal drowning.