Initial thoughts on The Next Day:

1. Like most of his later career stuff, a lot of this isn’t bad at all, just uninteresting. Like, “okay, whatever.”

2. If anyone other than David Bowie put this album out, people would unanimously criticize it by saying “sounds like a David Bowie album, except bad.” Basically they’d criticize it the same way they’re doing now, they’d just be much less apologetic. But this is the real David Bowie, so we should actually expect him to be better? This is an experienced, professional songwriter.

3. Sounds like the forgotten sequel to “Heroes”, which is my favorite Bowie album. You’d think I’d really go for this then, but it’s not at all equal to the original. Generally sounds like the drugs wore off and Bowie went back to the comfort of his own home to pen this hypothetical follow-up. Bowie’s vocals are a hell of a lot less manic (he’s old now, that’s fine).

Also, the guitarist is really flaccid. Obviously, he’s no Robert Fripp. And the album desperately needs Brian Eno’s paranoid production job. It all goes to show that David Bowie often needed other people to bring out the best in him and his songs, despite being a talented, creative individual himself.

4. Props for keeping it a solid 45 minutes. The album is on the verge of going on for too long, a problem I seem to run into a lot lately with albums that drag on for over 50 minutes with songs that should have ended much earlier than they did. Everything here is pretty tight. Edit: Wow, turns out two tracks had been mistagged and didn’t show up with the rest of the album. With those two, the album becomes 53 minutes. You know what that means….

5. Oh, how did I forget? This is remarkably energetic. Thank goodness. I was getting so sick of his ballads. David Bowie one-ups a lot of his aging singer/songwriter contemporaries with this. A couple of songs are actually fairly catchy. None really stand out to me as some of his best songs, but I’m certain they will grow on me.

6. The lyrics are cute (“Valentine’s Day”) and fun (“(You Will) Set the World on Fire”). The solo in the latter recalls Fripp on “Heroes” and Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). Cool!

7. About tied with Heathen as his best post-Scary Monsters album. This is a huge compliment because the two actually take two very different directions in tone and songs. Not only variety, but consistency. That was Bowie at his best.

8. Much better than I expected after hearing “Where Are We Now?” (the weakest song on the album, and I use “weak” very literally).

9. This definitely deserves more listens. But who knows when I’ll get around to them, because I still haven’t exhausted a lot of Bowie’s earlier albums which I still find superior in general.

10. I felt better about this album the more I wrote about it in here. I scrolled back up to 1 and now think it’s a little harsh. This is certainly better than a lot of his later stuff.

11. I should have been more confident about this album. After all, there was no way The Next Day could have been any worse than Black Tie White Noise.