YOUNG AMERICANS
| David Bowie
YOUNG AMERICANS
Young Americans is the ninth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 7 March 1975 by RCA Records. The album marked a departure from the glam rock style of Bowie's previous albums, showcasing his interest in soul and R&B music. Bowie would call the album's sound "plastic soul", describing it as "the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey". Initial recording sessions took place in Philadelphia with producer Tony Visconti and a variety of musicians, including guitarist Carlos Alomar, who would become one of Bowie's most frequent collaborators, and singer Luther Vandross. Bowie drew influence from the sound of "local dance halls", which were blaring with the "lush strings, sliding hi-hat whispers, and swanky R&B rhythms of Philadelphia Soul". Later sessions took place in New York City, including contributions from John Lennon. Bowie was among the first English pop musicians of the era to overtly engage with black musical styles. The album was very successful in the US; reaching the Top 10 in the Billboard charts, with the song "Fame" hitting the number-one the same year the album was released.[ It was generally well received by critics. - WIKIPEDIA
Critic Reviews
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pitchfork
2016- Young Americans represented David Bowie's dive into soul music, particularly Philly Soul. Containing the stunning funk single "Fame," the album felt like a vehicle for Bowie to address one of his favorite topics—pop stardom—from a new angle, at a moment when it seemed likely to destroy him.
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UCR
2016 - Young Americans would catch some listeners by surprise when it arrived in stores on March 7, 1975, but producer Tony Visconti claimed not to have been caught off guard by the change in direction. "He's been working to put together an R&B sound for years," he insisted. "Every British musician has a hidden desire to be black."
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BBC
2007 - 'Young Americans' has always occupied a troublesome niche in David Bowie’s catalogue...
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RollingStone
1975 - The title song of David Bowie’s Young Americans is one of his handful of classics, a bizarre mixture of social comment, run-on lyric style, English pop and American soul. The band plays great and Tony Visconti’s production is flawless — just a touch of old-fashioned slap-back echo to give the tracks some added mystery. The rest of the album works best when Bowie combines his renewed interest in soul with his knowledge of English pop, rather than opting entirely for one or the other.
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ALL MUSIC
Young Americans is more enjoyable as a stylistic adventure than as a substantive record.
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AV/MUSIC
delivered a soulful, stream-of-consciousness state of the nation.
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sputnik music
The really special thing about the LP is that Bowie did it all before disco really exploded and become a serious chart presence.
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popMATTERS
2007- Young Americans remains (for the majority of its runtime) a worthwhile pop record of persona renovation from a decade of artistic restlessness.
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The Guardian
2007 - This persona informs 1975's Young Americans, although Bowie's dramatic shift into black music is a more emotional record than his gleeful description of it as "plastic soul" implies.
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The Music Box
2007 - Young Americans can be viewed as the critical link that connects James Brown’s furious funk with the Talking Heads’ rich, polyrhythmic stew.
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Only Solitaire
David's infamous 'Philly soul' album. Absolutely inessential, but... still a good laugh after all those years.
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TREBLE
there was still a spacey and adventurous time for Bowie as he pulled out of the Stardust station, odd things ahead, pretty little things, and maybe all we have to blame is fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame.
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Adrian Denning
'Young Americans' is indeed David's American album. His American 'black' album, indeed. He used the right musicians, etc. He impressed said musicians with his vocal skills. Indeed, David's vocals are superb throughout this entire album.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
it's one of the funkiest things Bowie's ever recorded. But the rest is a bummer.
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UNCUT
absorbed American culture through immersion, like a fly floating in milk? Or was it all just a cynically executed plot to seduce and conquer the country that had so far resisted his manifold charms?
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Robert Christgau
I'm pleased with Bowie's renewed generosity of spirit--he takes pains to simulate compassion and risks failure simply by moving on. His reward is two successes: the title tune, in which pain stimulates compassion, and (Bowie-Lennon-Alomar's) "Fame," which rhymes with pain and makes you believe it.
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John McFerrin Music Reviews
Anyway, if you can find this for really cheap, give it a whirl, but otherwise, just look for the worthwhile tracks online. Thank goodness Bowie started snapping out of this phase about as quickly as he got into it.
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Pop Expresso
2019 - one of David Bowie’s most out of the box albums.
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Best Classic Bands
“Young Americans” was the beginning of Bowie’s U.S. breakthrough.
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Don Ignacio
I feel that I must point out that listening to David Sanborn's saxophone noodling throughout the album is freaking fantastic. Young Americans probably deserves a 9 for all the boringness that it inflicted onto me over the years, but the title track and “Fame” are such explosive monster-classics that they redeem those boring moments.
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Mark Prindle
This is the most unpredictable stylistic change you will find throughout his wild, woolly, eminently unsatisfying career, and a short-lived change it proved to be!
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EXPRESS
2007 - Young Americans is a masterpiece.
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And Antarictica
It may not have the raw energy of his glam stuff, nor the boundary pushing artiness of his Berlinera work with Brian Eno, but it’s a fine example of how his rampant restlessness allowed him to take a genre and run with it.
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Exploded Goat
2002- Bowie the fakir — black-faced, bland, and coming on like kid Bacall, smolder-husk and all — never gets on top of his soul move. The problem is slack execution of slickness. Almost unrelievedly passive in its expressionism, Young Americans is a con.
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