David Bowie - Hunky Dory
(RCA NL 83844)
Released 1983, RCA Label, manufactured in Germany.
Single sleeve.
 
Track Listing
Side 1
Track 1: Changes - 3:35
Track 2: Oh You Pretty Things - 3:12
Track 3: Eight Line Poem - 2:56
Track 4: Life On Mars - 3:51
Track 5: Kooks - 2:53
Track 6: Quicksand - 5:07
Side 2
Track 7: Fill Your Heart - 3:07
Track 8: Andy Warhol - 3:57
Track 9: Song For Bob Dylan - 4:12
Track 10: Queen Bitch - 3:19
Track 11: The Bewlay Brothers - 5:24
 
Description
Hunky Dory is the fourth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 17 December 1971 by RCA Records. It was his first release through RCA, which would be his label for the next decade. Hunky Dory has been described by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine as having "a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie's sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class".
The album has received critical acclaim since its release, and is regarded as one of Bowie's best works. Time chose it as part of their "100 best albums of all time" list in January 2010, with journalist Josh Tyrangiel praising Bowie's "earthbound ambition to be a bohopoet with prodigal style". The style of the album cover, designed by George Underwood, was influenced by a Marlene Dietrich photo book that Bowie took with him to the photo shoot.
With new bass player Trevor Bolder replacing Tony Visconti, Hunky Dory was the first production featuring all the members of the band that would become known the following year as Ziggy Stardust's Spiders From Mars. Also debuting with Bowie, in Visconti's place as producer, was another key contributor to the Ziggy phase, Ken Scott. The album's sleeve would bear the credit "Produced by Ken Scott (assisted by the actor)". The "actor" was Bowie himself, whose "pet conceit", in the words of NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray, was "to think of himself as an actor".
Musical biographer David Buckley said of Hunky Dory, "Its almost easy-listening status and conventional musical sensibility has detracted from the fact that, lyrically, this record lays down the blueprint for Bowie's future career." The opening track, "Changes", focused on the compulsive nature of artistic reinvention ("Strange fascination, fascinating me/Changes are taking the pace I'm going through") and distancing oneself from the rock mainstream ("Look out, you rock 'n' rollers"). However, the composer also took time to pay tribute to his influences with the tracks "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol" and the Velvet Underground inspired "Queen Bitch".
Following the hard rock of Bowie's previous album The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory saw the partial return of the fey pop singer of Space Oddity, with light fare such as "Kooks" (dedicated to his young son, known to the world as Zowie Bowie but legally named Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones) and the cover "Fill Your Heart" sitting alongside heavier material like the occult-tinged "Quicksand" and the semi-autobiographical "The Bewlay Brothers". Between the two extremes was "Oh! You Pretty Things", whose pop tune hid lyrics, inspired by Nietzsche, predicting the imminent replacement of modern man by "the Homo Superior", and which has been cited as a direct precursor to "Starman" from Bowie's next album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
 
(information sourced from wikipedia)
Internet Location
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunky_Dory