Customer Reviews

Young Americans

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After "Diamond Dogs", the world was thrown off balance again with Bowie's rumors of hanging out in a Philadelphia studio with fans sleeping at the stage door. It was the same city he recorded the "Diamond Dogs" tour - the `City of Brotherly Love'. Black/White Soul Love music from Bowie? No way. Yes way. Although it was a strong departure, "Young Americans" has become one of those Bowie albums that are so unique and distinct in its character that you either love it or hate it. It's all true soul funk with the magical backup of the late Luther Vandross's voice. "Young Americans" made it as a modest single, but it was the collaborative effort of "Fame" with John Lennon that is the song of choice here. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. Bowie's rendering of "Across The Universe" is an uninspired tribute to Lennon and "Can You Hear Me" is bland. However, "Somebody Up There Like Me" is a true funky bass driven number that completely satisfies. At the very least, this album is consistent and Bowie proves he truly has some serious soul.

THIS IS A CLASSIC ALBUM AND ONE YOU OUGHT TO HEAR AGAIN AND AGAIN. Smooth, polished, perfect -- if David Bowie had emerged from the primordial goo of 60s/70s music to deliver only this single album (as opposed to his Picasso-like eternal rock brilliance) he would still be considered a genius.

For someone to term this album "plastic" is an abomination. This is brilliant work, satisfying on several levels at once, not the least of which is the joy of hearing the stellar production and playing throughout the album. The arrangements will have you out of your seat with joy, shouting out the open front door to the neighbors to get over here and listen to this, no, wait, I'll just turn it up. It's *exciting* how good this music is.

There's one point in "Win" where the background singers, Bowie, and the bass line are all happening and it's a kind of vortex or singularity that delivers all that music has to offer, I mean they really grab the gold ring and bring it home to show Grandma. This album is so good that I've never objected to the horn charts, which always irritate me otherwise. It's a beautifully crafted album, truly a work of art.

Yes, "Across The Universe" blows monkey chunks. Listen, not every oyster you slice open is going to contain a pearl, you know what I mean..? And I heard "Young Americans" often enough in high school to really never want to hear the song again, though 25 years on it's not half as bad as I recall.

The combination of Win > Fascination > Right > Somebody Up There stands as the vital, beating heart of the album. Excellent for slow f*cking. This album is like the Seventh Cavalry riding over the mountain to save the day, this album is like Charlemagne or King Arthur's Camelot riding up to your house on horseback with nothing but good news. Boundless riches.

Can he sing the blues? Don't stray. This is an excellent album, well worth the price. You will never regret having purchased it. There are more visceral and more forgettable Bowie albums, but this is the most elegant and refined rock album that God has so far seen fit to release to the general public (you and me).

Note from 2004: DB is apparently mortal after all, having had a stent installed in a heart procedure this year. Difficult to believe. Anyone that's reached the stratospheric heights like David Bowie has hit musically ought to be immune from death... what a genius. This album is irrefutable proof of his staggering talent. David Bowie defines what a rock star is. You have GOT to hear this album!

Bowie's Glam edifice is reclad in philly soul slacks and swaps Londons West End for Broadway.

During his two year North American drive-thru, performing Glitter caked heavy metal at night,Bowie was by day absorbing the sounds of Galdys Night, Billy Paul et al. By 1974, he had already signposted his change of direction on his Orwellian 'concept' album, Diamond Dogs. Listen to 'When you rock and Roll with me' and you'll get the picture. Just in case no one took the hint, he embarked on another jaunt around the states with a convoy of trucks containing a 'post apocolyptic cityscape' stage set, from which he sang soulfull renditions of his back catalogue. Listen to the resultant 'David Live' album and and you can hear radically reworked versions of, most notably, 'Moonage daydream', 'All the young Dudes' and a spectacular camp-soul version of 'Rock'n'roll suicide.

When his convoy of props ended up in the florida swamps thanks to a road 'incident', he reopened at the Curtis Hixon Hall, somewhere in florida (don't ask me to be geographically precise here - I'm from Scotland)as a stripped down soul revue. The Diamond Dogs tour was over and the 'Philly Dogs tour began.

When Young Americans hit the shelves then, nobody should have been surprised. They were however (myself included, all that knowing cynisism is just hindsight. I was ten!) and the 'chamelion of rock' had just managed another total reinvention.

The hype around this was magnified in the UK when the BBC broadcast 'Cracked Actor', a documentry that managed to portray a skeletal anorexic coke head as the most intelligent and (still) glamorous entity in the universe - in the eyes of a ten year old anyhow. Still, He backed up the smoke and mirrors with a batch of music that will stand the most vigorous testing for a long time to come. As the album kicks off with the awesome title track, you know that you are in for something special. He manages to paint a picture if cosmopolotan urban streetlife and varnishes if with a veneer of contemporary political bite. There is even some prototype rapping at the end. 'Win' is a late night candlelit dinner in a Manhattan penthouse that is given a dark underbelly by Bowies' deep swimming vocals and decadent phrasing. Where did Ziggy get that voice?? 'Fascination' is a taster for his later multi layer production techniques with Eno. Here, they are used to convey an urgent and sexy groove and a certain Mr Luther Vandross is used superbly on backing vocals. 'Right' continues the theme in a slightly choppier manner and gives way to 'Somebody up there likes me' which, as well as being astoundingly good, conjured up images of 'The Candidate' and, er, 'Rhoda' (it's MY image and I'm going to use it).

Across the Universe should be awfull. I believe that it is generaly accepted as awfull (I may be wrong) but I love it. Compare Lennons' original wispy vocals with Bowies swirling vocal gymnastics and It's plain to see that the whole ethos of the song is being bulldozed. Still, I love it. 'Can you hear me' was the song that I used to play in my teens when trying to be sophiticated with a girl of my fancy. The fact that I didn't score once does not detract from the sheer shaggability factor of this song. Snogtastic. Then there's 'Fame'. One night with Lennon on a James Brown trip and you have the King of dancefloor Strutters. It is so cool it's positively artic. The man was truly godlike in his snide venomous put down of the trappings of his holy grail. The more knowing of us ten year olds could empathise with the man. It really was tough being so creative, enigmatic and famous.

The extra tracks on this reissue demonstrate what a hot streak Bowie was on. Somebody else said this and it is true. Bowie was diching tracks that other artists would have built careers on. That they can hold their own in such company should be recommendation enough.

This album kicked off the most creative period of Bowies' career. That it did so employing the likes of Dennis Davis, Earl Slick and Carlos Alomar is no coincidence. Check out the credits on the subsequent 'Stationtostation', 'Low', 'Heroes', 'Lodger', and 'Scary mosters' discs.

Young Americans is my favourite Bowie album, though not for any inellectual or aesthetic reasons. Scotland had a very rare real summer in 1975 and this music was perfect for bright summer days and hot steamy nights. Even when you were ten. We had even had a drought in '76 but that's another album.

This album gets five stars because that's all I'm allowed to award. Go buy it.

I don't quite understand why so many people are bashing the title track. Sure, it's catchy, but if you stop (for once!) and listen to the lyrics, they are fantastic and really deep. Bowie is viewing "savage" America through European glasses (I wonder if he read "Lolita"). "Well well well would you carry a razor? In a case just in case of depression?" It's filled with metaphors and little puns pop up throughout--I found that the lyrics was just as interesting as the "soul experiment." All the other songs are great, I can't think of a bad tune on here. "Across the Universe" is wonderful, too. It's crazy...it's almost like Bowie is trying to beat the song to death; quite different than the lissome original--he treats the lyrics like fodder for a different purpose. This album is simply a classic.

Recorded in Philadelphia during the difficult "Diamond Dogs" tour, "Young Americans" is a record borne out of Bowie's fascination with American soul music at the time. Having shed himself of the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane personas, a new clean-cut, more normalised Bowie was preparing to say bye-bye to the Glam Rock he had helped so much to fashion.

Many of the fans he had amassed from the Ziggy Stardust days were dismayed by their hero's new direction and fled. Nevertheless, "Young Americans" proved to be an influential album. Later coined "plastic soul", this type of white, blue-eyed soul opened the door for many other acts.

The title track is one of Bowie's best songs. Accompanied by a seductive sax, Bowie sings in an urgent, almost breathless manner. This is essentially American life as seen through an Englishman's eyes, and so the lyrics with their almost cliched Americana never seem totally comfortable. On "Win", one of the album's stronger tracks, Bowie sings: "If there's nothing to hide me/Then you've never seen me hanging naked and wired" suggesting that we may finally be getting a glimpse at the man beneath the make up, the real Bowie. "Fascination", another of the albums better tracks was co-written by a young Luther Vandross who was drafted in to assist on backing vocals. The Beatles' "Across The Universe" is also given the disco treatment but remains a rather lacklustre affair. "Fame", a song added onto the album as an afterthought, was a result of a jam session in New York with friend John Lennon. This wry commentary on the rock `n' roll lifestyle went straight to number one in the US charts when it was released.

The production is suitably slick throughout, but it all remains rather extravagant and self-indulgent. There may be soul here, but unfortunately there is not much body. But this record does at least demonstrate Bowie's chameleon like ability to adopt and quickly learn different styles of music and make them his own. Fortunately Bowie got this soul "fascination" out of his system and moved on from here to perhaps his best period (see "Station To Station" and the Eno trilogy).

I can understand how this album might not appeal to certain people, I suppose. That being said, I suppose the best way to put into words how I feel about this album is that it is like a religious experience for me.

I started out listening to Bowie albums like Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs, so I was totally unprepared when I heard this. My father swore by it, and after listening to it myself I wholeheartedly agree with him that this is a completely underappreciated album.

"Young Americans" is my second favorite song period. Not second favorite Bowie song, just second favorite period. This song alone is almost worth the price of admission, and I would make the case that it is one of the best songs ever written. Maybe I'm going a bit overboard there, but I'm simply in love with the tune.

As for the meat of the album, turn the stereo up, grab a glass of your favorite wine, dim the lights and enjoy. This album simply screams - or croons, rather - smooth. I'm thinking of "Can You Hear Me" in particular.

I'd recommend this album to anyone and everyone, but if you're a Bowie fan and you don't already have this within 10 feet of your person while you read this, you should probably be ashamed of yourself.

When David Bowie made his "last show" announcement during the last Ziggy tour, people considered it to be his retirement from music altogether. Luckily, it wasn't but it certainly was a permanent retire of a persona that had begun to get in the way of Bowie's creative pursuits. ZIGGY may be the more influential one, but YOUNG AMERICANS proved the most that Bowie was a cat with more than one life. The sweet soul music of Philadelphia had made a fan of Bowie, so he travelled there to make his "soul album". While this can easily be dismissed as one of Bowie's "experiments", it is by far one of his most successful. The title track was only a moderate hit single, but David's most important song since "Changes", and a great introduction to this album filled with all the things that made '70s soul great. "Fame", of course, became Bowie's first American chart-topper, and resulted in him being one of the first white performers to guest on SOUL TRAIN. When I heard the song in the NEXT FRIDAY movie, I finally saw just how influential this album had become. David Bowie may have been white as a dove, but he could certainly pass for black musically like no one else. Except for the lifeless take on "Across The Universe", YOUNG AMERICANS finally demonstrated the staying power David Bowie really had.

This 1975 release features the chamelion like Bowie, exploring Philadelphia soul. The disk showcases a young Luther Vandross, who sings background and co-wrote one of the stronger tunes, "Fascination". The cast is stellar as usual, with guitarist Carlos Alomar, Mike Garson on keys, David Sanborn on saxaphone (instead of Bowie himself), studio greats Willie Weeks on bass and Andy Newmark on drums. The guests are great as well, including Earl Slick, who plays guitar on "Fame", Ralph McDonald, percussion on "Fame" and "Across the Universe", which also feature John Lennon on vocals and guitar. The background vocals are powerful and provide strong support to Bowie, who croons most of the songs other than "Fame". Tony Visconi's production layers these great musicans into the perfect sound for Bowie's exploration into the world of soul and dance music. I recommend this.

First of all, I'd just like to correct Mr. P. Nicholas Keppler "rorscach12", who said 'in a career that had not yet lasted a decade'. Well, when your first single is released in 1964, then in 1975, well, it actually has been a decade :P. no hard feelings, just thought it was a funny mistake, otherwise your review rules.

Anyway, Young Americans was the album which really broke David Bowie in America. Its importance here has been much overrated, after all 'Diamond Dogs' had reached #5 in the US, and, considering it is just a live album, even more impressively, 'David Live' followed it into the US Top Ten, peaking at #8. Both these albums outdid 'Young Americans', which "only" reached #10, in sheer chart position, but on the other hand YA stayed in the US chart for 17 weeks, while DD only lasted 10, and DL 8. An extremely polpular myth is, that Young Americans was a #2 in the UK. False. Young Americans topped the UK charts at #1 for one week.

As for the album, it starts with the title track (UK #18, US #28), a true Bowie classic & a brilliantly written lyric. The following song 'Win' is another pure classic, & the lyrics are simply divine. 'Win' is also a good place to start for those who worship things like 'Sweet Thing' & 'Aladdin Sane' (the song). There is a detached cool in the melancholy of the song's evocative vocal. 'Fascination', the best dance track on the record, may apall many starman-fans, but I, myself a worshipper of glam, urge everybody to give this track a lot of chances, & in the end, it needs only one before the listener is caught... 'Right' is a bit inferior to 'Win', but much in the same vein, & in its own right a wonderful song. 'Somebody Up There Likes Me' follows this tradition, & who can love 'Rock'n'Roll With Me', but not fall for these songs?
'Across The Universe' has by many been accused of being inferior to that of the Beatles', & blasphemic at least. Granted, the Beatles' version is better. But Bowie's fits best on this album, & I am him forever grateful that he didn't just copy the song on say 'Hunky Dory' or 'hours', but changed the song to be his own on this his own album. Lennon appears on that track, by the way.
Admitted 'Can You Hear Me' may be a bit too much, or a bit too boring, overblowing the formula that succeeded into brilliance on 'Somebody Up There Likes Me'. But that it should be anything less than a good song is a lie.
'Fame', Bowie's first US #1 hit, & his first big hit over there at all, was made from Carlos Alomar's version of the riff from 'Footstompin' set to Bowie's lyrics of fame's hell, & with Lennon being in the room (!) [apparently, his presence was crucial to the making of the song, but he didn't write that much of it]. Anyway 'Fame' is a great song (though the title track of the album deserved a better chart placing than this), not really a classic, but a wonderful riff-driven soul chant.

On 'Young Americans' David Bowie is trying to transform
himself into some kind of abstract Philly soul singer.And on most of the songs that's what happens-he's singing torchy,mid
'70's R&B ballads that all seem to revolve around loss of one kind or another.This album all sounds better on it's leaner,funkier uptempo songs like the title track (David Sanborn
blows some serious sax) and the churning "Right" and "Fame",the
latter of whitch features an odd vocal arrangement with John
Lennon!So those three tunes are enough to make this album an
all around winner.The playing may be a bit too clean compared
to his older,wilder music but this has it's definate pluses!