Allow me to cut the crap \u2013 Tonight<\/i> is nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. Not that that really surprises me, considering how much mediocre music David Bowie created even during the peak of his career. In the past, he was at least able to spread out his lousier songs over the course of many good albums to minimize their notability, but apparently it was only a matter of time before the floodgates would open and allow the raw sewage to collect in one place. Tonight<\/i> is so bad in fact that I would have to say that it immediately secured itself a place on my Top 10 worst albums ever list. Subjecting myself to this \u201cmusic\u201d was simply torturous.<\/p>\n
One could make the very weak argument that this outcome was the inevitable result of the record label pressuring Bowie to release a new album promptly on the heels of the wildly successful Let\u2019s Dance<\/i> from the previous year in order to keep the momentum going, and the evidence that Tonight<\/i> was a rushed affair is found in the fact that out of nine songs, two are covers and two more are re-recorded versions of songs Bowie and Iggy Pop wrote for Pop\u2019s album The Idiot<\/i> seven years earlier. That still doesn\u2019t excuse this atrocious stink bomb of a record. I\u2019m seriously considering flagellating myself for the cardinal sin of having sat through this disc. There’s nothing here other than one long, excruciatingly lame, ultra-lite synth funk\/reggae track under the guise of nine “different” songs. Now, reggae isn’t exactly an edgy form of music by any means, but even UB40 would erupt with gales of laughter at All of the songs\u00a0have really slow, sleepy rhythms as if Seriously, even Michael Bolton albums have more grit than this. Half the album is over by the time the first “rock” song appears, but it’s so disgustingly toothless with its dumbassed riff and processed hair metal solo that you’ll be tempted to desperately grab the nearest To be completely fair, the eerie “Loving The Alien” provides a decent listening experience before one realizes that it\u2019s essentially a mash-up of “Ashes To Ashes” with elements of “Let’s Dance,, plus additional \u201cinspiration\u201d from Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed” and the Psychedelic Furs \u201cLove My Way.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the one big hit from the album, \u201cBlue Jean,\u201d isn\u2019t quite as offensive as the rest of the songs, but that doesn\u2019t prevent it from being a simplistic, droning bore unworthy of even sniffing Ziggy Stardust\u2019s sequined panties.<\/p>\n Beset by the absolute worst excesses of \u201880s production techniques, Tonight <\/i>ceaselessly grates on one\u2019s audio sense like nails on a chalkboard. A stillborn travesty on every imaginable level and an embarrassment for David Bowie on such colossal scale that were he to have any sense whatsoever, he would have the album permanently pulled from store shelves (and digital downloads, these days) and have the master tapes destroyed in order to prevent this sonic plague from ever contaminating the unsuspecting ears of the public ever again. It might prove useful at