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Reality

David Bowie Audio CD
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
Price: £5.07 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Music

Image of album by David Bowie

Photos

Image of David Bowie

Biography

Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
The cliché about David Bowie says he's a musical chameleon, adapting himself according to fashion and trends. While such a criticism is too glib, there's no denying that Bowie demonstrated remarkable skill for perceiving musical trends at his peak in the '70s. After spending several years in the late '60s as a mod and as an ... Read more in Amazon's David Bowie Store

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for 333 albums, 16 photos, discussions, and more.

Frequently Bought Together

Reality + Heathen + Hours
Price For All Three: £14.01

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  • Heathen £5.07
  • Hours £3.87

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Product details

  • Audio CD (15 Sep 2003)
  • Number of Discs: 1
  • Label: Sony Music CMG
  • ASIN: B0000ALE3X
  • Other Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 6,316 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

1. New Killer Star
2. Pablo Picasso
3. Never Get Old
4. The Loneliest Guy
5. Looking For Water
6. She'll Drive The Big Car
7. Days
8. Fall Dog Bombs The Moon
9. "Try Some, Buy Some"
10. Reality
11. Bring Me The Disco King

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk

Youth, as the old adage goes, is wasted on the young, although surely Reality highlights the ambiguously chameleonic and now comfortably middle-aged David Bowie as an honourable exception to the rule, a man whose soul and creative metre endures to pursue eternal youth within the accelerating self-awareness of his own mortality. Times were when he'd never get away with it.

In recent years Bowie has had a frustrating tendency to handle his own past with varying degrees of bemusement--whether to suffer it, stroke it, spit on it or merely borrow from it (some of Reality's best tracks, the quasi-political "Fall Dog Bomb the Moon" and the electronic punk of "New Killer Star", both shadow his past while exploring the neurosis of our post-9/11 world) while, in a manner most unbecoming of one of rock's most eminent pace-makers, he's chased juvenescent pop fads like some Botox-injecting fashionista. However, Reality, much like its immediate predecessor, the highly-regarded Heathen (Tony Visconti remains at the production helm), finds Bowie reacclimatising to his muse and his life--both as an Englishman in New York and as a doomed rider on the proverbial storm of existence--just beautifully. There are home truths and cognitive mirror gazes on the title track, a sleazy roughed-up diamond with Johnny Rotten-ish cackles and squawky guitars on which he casts a conciliatory glance towards his previous rock & roll personae and despairs at how he "hid amongst the junk of wretched highs" whereas the equally excellent and morbidly cheery "Never Get Old" (musically, imagine a more flippantly sing-along "Sound and Vision") is as comically fatalistic as a two-fingered salute from a retirement home window.

Despite cracking a wicked smile on a rampant strut through Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso", Reality favours brooding philosophising over light-hearted chuckles--see "Looking for Water", the dramatic grand piano and images of dislocated metropolitan topography on the 'Loneliest Guy" and the sullen dying breath of "Bring Me the Disco King"--but Bowie admits to being just like the rest of us in not having the answers. Still, Reality consolidates Bowie's artistic rehabilitation and ranks as another fine album from a man still willing to ask questions of himself. --Kevin Maidment

Product Description

DAVID BOWIE Reality (2003 UK 11-track CD album including the single New Killer Star)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Like a leather Messiah.... 19 Sep 2003
By Mr. Christopher Lancaster VINE™ VOICE
Format:Audio CD
Every album Bowie has ever made has had high points. Even critically slated albums such as Tonight had its good moments (Blue Jean, for example), as did Tin Machine - their version of Maggie's Farm was, to my mind, one of his best ever tracks. Recent albums (and by recent, I mean the last 10 years' worth) have been, although better than most other bands around, still patchy in places. From Black Tie White Noise through to Heathen, they have all been generally good, but with a few poor songs to balance out the brilliant.

This is not the case with Reality, however. From the moment that 'New Killer Star' beings with it's classic Bowie sound reminiscent in places of Rebel Rebel and Jean Genie, through the spanish guitar laden insanity that is Pablo Picasso and onwards, there is not a bad moment to be heard. Throughout the 90s, sometimes it seemed that Bowie was trying just too hard to be trendy, hip and different. But the good work on Heathen has been continued, and to my mind this IS his best album in certainly 20 years, perhaps longer. It's certainly the one that has impressed me most after just two or three listens - probably more so than anything since Heroes.

This album deserves to be heard, and it deserves to be loved. If there's any justice, it will outsell all the TV manufactured rubbish in the charts, and give Bowie the incentive to carry on making music this good for another 35 years.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Money, money,money 23 Nov 2003
Format:Audio CD
This is the third edition of Reality in two months. The news are that in this one you have a dvd with a life performance of the Reality songs (not the classic ones he sang in that concert) and the great cover of Kinks classic Waterloo Sunset (the same bonus track you can find in the japanesse edition).

For me, the best songs are New Killer Star (buy the dvd single), Reality, Never Get Old, Pablo Picasso, Fall Dog Bombs The Moon and Bring Me The Disco King (maybe the Underworld Soundtrack version is even better).

P.S.: The song in the french advert was Never Get Old, and not Lookin For Water. You can watch the advert in www.davidbowie.com

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Dance, Dance, Dance 25 Sep 2003
Format:Audio CD
When you listen to 'Reality' in a concentrated way, you start to hear some of its truly inspired touches. It's full of good, enjoyable tracks, but within those tracks can be found a playful experimenting that makes you go back and play them again - just to make sure you haven't missed anything the first time. And it's this quality that makes 'Reality' such a marvellous album - it's got longevity, and won't travel to the bottom of people's CD racks for quite some time.

A complete contrast to 'Heathen', occupying a different imaginative space entirely, this is a textured and tantilizing, immensely varied album. Pretty much what you expect from David Bowie.

And it makes you want to dance.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars top draw
another bowie album which was overlooked in general and on listening it becomes a real grower there are some excellent tunes and it is quite varied a great buy for any collection
Published 11 days ago by william a barry
5.0 out of 5 stars Reality cd David Bowie
Wow. This is brilliant Bowie. I don't know how I missed it when it came out. The reviewers are all over him now but were they then? I missed it if they were
Published 21 days ago by baz123
4.0 out of 5 stars A great discovery (ten years late)
This is not the David Bowie of the Serious Artistic Statement (Diamond Dogs, Station to Station, Heroes and latterly The Next Day), it's Bowie making some great songs, presumably... Read more
Published 27 days ago by Anon
5.0 out of 5 stars god bowie
as i have said beforethis man is a legend.ilove all his music and all his albums.his films...i just adore the man and his music
Published 1 month ago by rene
4.0 out of 5 stars Real good
I`m not the world`s biggest Bowie fan - couldn`t see the point of Ziggy or his dubious Berlin chic phase (though I like do Heroes) and some of his musical outings have either left... Read more
Published 2 months ago by GlynLuke
3.0 out of 5 stars Good in places but nowhere near great.
This album came out incredibly quickly after his last (Heathen) for a man at his stage in his career, and sadly it shows. Read more
Published 2 months ago by M. S. Skeldon
1.0 out of 5 stars Worst Bowie Album
Oh dear! I was all full of expectation and excitement when I ordered this as I had been waiting 10 years to buy it. But upon listening to it I became more and more disappointed. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Miss Heather Morgan
5.0 out of 5 stars A NEW ALADDIN SANE
My review of Aladdin Sane said it was a weird mix of styles and sounds, but it worked. Well same here without the "Glam Rock". Basically soft rock and pop but with hidden depths. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr Paul Savory
5.0 out of 5 stars Four star material, five star sound
I am quite surprised that no one has reviewed this version of the Reality album yet. Plenty of reviews for the normal CD version and the bonus disc version, but none whatsoever for... Read more
Published 6 months ago by R. A. Arthur
4.0 out of 5 stars Fresher and less complex than Heathen but still high quality
A wonderful listen. 'New Killer Star' is a great opener - the cover of Pablo Picasso is superb, 'Days' is beautiful - but for me it is worth buying just for 'She Drives the Big... Read more
Published 8 months ago by trendy
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