Hunky Dory is, for me, absolutely peerless. It’s perfection. It’s still overlooked in favour of The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust, etc, but it never fails to make me feel all warm inside. It’s hard to believe that Bowie was only in his twenties when this masterpiece was created.
The songwriting, as well as the production by Ken Scott, is immaculate. Although it was the fourth studio album, it’s very much David Bowie finding his true voice. He had flirted with fashion before, but this was style with substance. It has humour, swagger and philosophy. Imagine penning Life On Mars? at twenty four. He wasn ‘t just fully -formed, he was next level.
The beautiful song Kooks, written by Bowie for his newborn son Duncan, is that rare thing in lyrics: a father addressing his fears as a new dad. To a deceptively jaunty melody, he’s laying out his own vulnerability, front and centre. His disdain for the crushing school system is apparent, as is his cowardice: “Don’t pick fights with the bullies or the cads/cause I’m not much cop at punching other people’s dads”. It’s so eccentric,so funny that you shouldn’t tear up, but you do. This is Bowie saying it’s okay to be sensitive.
There’s not one weak moment to be found here. The tracks- from Changes to The Bewlay Brothers-are camp, idiosyncratic and thematically audacious. Yet for all its scope, the album sold poorly. It seems that much of the world just wasn’t ready for musings on Nietzsche, The Factory and showtunes with arched eyebrows in 1971. Their loss.
It occurred to me the other day that I’ve been a Bowie nut for over forty years. This a!bum was my entry point, and I love it now as much as when I first heard it. Happy birthday David Bowie, your genius endures.
Hit The North 