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Tonight is the 16th studio album by English singer-songwriter David Bowie, released on 24 September 1984 through EMI America Records.
The follow-up to his most commercially successful album Let's Dance (1983), it was written and recorded in mid-1984 at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Canada, following the conclusion of the Serious Moonlight Tour.
The music on Tonight has been characterised as pop, blue-eyed soul, dance and rock. Much of the album's sound is the same as its predecessor's, due to Bowie's effort to retain the new audience that he had recently attracted, although some tracks contain R&B and reggae influences.
Bowie, Derek Bramble, and Hugh Padgham produced the album. Much of Bowie's creative process was the same as he used on Let's Dance. Many of the same personnel from Let's Dance and the Serious Moonlight tour returned for the Tonight sessions, with a few additions. Like its predecessor, Bowie played no instruments on Tonight, instead offering little creative input to the musicians during the sessions. Devoid of new ideas from touring, Bowie wrote only two new songs himself.
Three songs, including the title track, were covers of Iggy Pop songs, who was present during most of the sessions and co-wrote multiple tracks.
The title track is a duet with singer Tina Turner. The artwork, featuring Bowie blue-painted against an oil painting backdrop, was designed by Mick Haggerty.
Commentators have characterised Tonight as pop, blue-eyed soul, dance and rock. Furthermore, James Perone notes the presence of reggae, R&B and ska. The record's sound is similar to Let's Dance and the Serious Moonlight tour; Bowie purposefully made it this way because he felt the new fans he had accumulated would expect to hear the same thing on the new album that they had heard before.
Of the nine songs on the album, Bowie was the sole writer for only two, "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean"; two, "Tumble and Twirl" and "Dancing with the Big Boys", were co-written by Bowie and Iggy Pop, and the remaining five are cover versions, three originally by Pop: "Don't Look Down", "Tonight" and "Neighborhood Threat".
One cover was the Beach Boys' 1966 song "God Only Knows", which, according to Pegg, was shortlisted for Bowie's 1973 covers album Pin Ups. Bowie explained: "I think that [Tonight] gave me a chance, like Pin Ups did a few years ago, to do some covers that I always wanted to do."
The final cover is the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller-penned "I Keep Forgettin'", originally made famous by Chuck Jackson.
Side one
Bowie described "Loving the Alien" as a very personal bit of writing that he did not feel fitted in with the rest of the album because it is such a dark song amidst lighter fare. He said, "'Alien' came about because of my feeling that so much history is wrong – as is being rediscovered all the time – and that we base so much on the wrong knowledge that we've gleaned." Alomar thought the song "had to do with Major Tom", a claim Bowie rejected.
The lyrics are religion-based and politically charged. While Pegg believes it to be a terrific song, he finds it weighed down by "over-elaborate production". Bowie later admitted that the demo was superior. Bowie's reworking of "Don't Look Down" is influenced by reggae music. He had attempted it in many different ways, including jazz rock, march and ska, but felt none of them worked. O'Leary criticises Bowie's version, finding that it strips the "power" of Pop's original. Buckley on the other hand, finds it "super-cool".
Bowie's rendition of "God Only Knows" incorporates strings and saxophone, while he sings his vocal in a croon. Although Bowie was defensive of his recording in an interview with Charles Shaar Murray in 1984, both Pegg and O'Leary consider Bowie's rendition as "the worst recording he ever made".
Buckley equally calls it one of two "nadirs" on the record and a "bathetic interpretation". For the title track, Bowie eliminated Pop's original spoken word introduction, calling it an "idiosyncratic thing of [Pop's] that it seemed not part of my vocabulary."
Bowie's rendition, sung as a duet with Tina Turner, is reggae-influenced. Her vocals are placed low in the mix, which O'Leary believes gives her "no entry point". Despite mostly being held in low regard, Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone at the time praised Bowie's version, calling it "one of the most vibrantly beautiful tracks he's ever recorded".
Side two
"Neighborhood Threat" features a heavier guitar sound than Pop's original, although Pegg says that Bowie's version lacks the original's "doom-laden percussion and wall-of-sound atmospherics". It stands out as a track Bowie wished he had not done, with him later calling it "disastrous". "That's one I wish I'd never touched, or at least touched it differently. It went totally wrong.
It sounded so tight and compromised, and it was such a gas doing it. It was the wrong band to do it with – wonderful band, but it wasn't quite right for that song." "Blue Jean" has been generally seen as the best song on the album.
O'Leary writes it follows the "Let's Dance formula", in that it's an "uptempo throwback" to 1950s and 1960s artists, particularly Eddie Cochran. Later dubbed by Bowie as "sexist rock 'n' roll", Buckley calls it a "fine pop song", albeit "slightly run-of-the-mill by Bowie's standards".
"Tumble and Twirl" recounts Bowie and Pop's exploits while vacationing in the Indonesian islands of Bali and Java after Bowie's previous tour had ended. Bowie felt that lyrically Pop's work stood out the most on the track. Pegg finds its music as reminiscent of world music, which Bowie explored on Lodger (1979). Biographers have criticised the rendition of "I Keep Forgettin'"; Buckley called it "unmemorable".
At the time, Bowie said, "I always wanted to do that song." "Dancing with the Big Boys" is about the "little guy" being crushed by "oppressive corporate structures". The lyrics were taken from a backlog of unused lyrics. Containing many studio effects, Pegg says it foreshadows what Bowie would explore on Never Let Me Down (1987). Bowie has said it is the "best example" of what he was trying to accomplish on Tonight:
There's a particular sound I'm after that I haven't really got yet; I'll either crack it on the next album or retire from it. I think I got quite close to it on "Dancing with the Big Boys." ... I got very musical over the last couple of years – trying to write musically and develop things the way people used to write in the Fifties. I stayed away from experimentation. Now, I think I should be a bit more adventurous. And in "Big Boys," Iggy and I broke away from all that for one track, and it came nearer to the sound I was looking for than anything else.
Side one
1. Loving The Alien - 7:07
2. Don’t Look Down - 4:08
3. God Only Knows - 3:04
4. Tonight (feat. Tina Turner) - 3:42
Side two
1. Neighborhood Threat - 3:10
2. Blue Jean - 3:09
3. Tumble And Twirl - 4:56
4. I Keep Forgettin’ - 2:32
5. Dancing With The Big Boys (feat. Iggy Pop) - 3:32
Personnel
Adapted from the Tonight liner notes.
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The Borneo Horns
- Stanley Harrison – alto saxophone; tenor saxophone
- Lenny Pickett – tenor saxophone; clarinet
- Steve Elson – baritone saxophone
Production
- David Bowie – producer
- Derek Bramble – producer
- Hugh Padgham – producer, engineer and mixer
Notes
Release: 1984
Format: LP
Genre: Pop, Blue-Eyed Soul
Label: EMI Records
Catalog# 1C 064-240227-1
Vinyl: Excellent
Cover: Excellent
Prijs: €10,00
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