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Originally Posted by Smokers Gifts
I always had a soft spot for this album. The criticism at the time was that it was Bowie 'trying to grab a slice of the dance scene pie', but I think that's kind of missing the point. The album is probably easier to enjoy now it's removed from the time it was produced and the musical trends that surrounded it.
Little Wonder is not my favourite song, but that video is amazing, never saw it before!
My favourite tracks are Law (Earthlings on Fire), Battle For Britain, Dead Man Walking and I'm Afraid of Americans.
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Yeah, I do recall him getting a bit of flak at the time. People making cracks about a "fifty year old rock star jumpin' on the drum and bass bandwagon", but really there's only a couple songs on there that have a "drum and bass" foundation, namely "Little Wonder" and "Telling Lies", and he's always excelled at drawing from different influences to create his own unique synthesis. That's something I remember him remarking on not long after the album's release. My personal favorite tracks are probably "Little Wonder", "Looking For Satellites", "Seven Years In Tibet" and "Dead Man Walking". I also really like the Trent Reznor mix of "I'm Afraid Of Americans".
A couple interesting "Earthling" related tidbits for y'all....
You may notice the main riff for "Dead Man Walking" bares a resemblance to the old "Man Who Sold The World" song "The Supermen". According to Bowie it is basically the same riff he based both songs on and it was something he nicked from a young Jimmy Page way back when. He did a really cool acoustic version of "Dead Man Walking" which highlights the similarity between the two songs on Conan I think it was. Might be floating around on youtube....
Another interesting thing about "Earthling" is the manner in which the lyrics were composed. As a lot of you probably are well aware Bowie had taken to using the "cut up technique" most commonly associated with William Burroughs around the time of "Diamond Dogs". By the time of "Outside" and "Earthling" he had a custom computer program created. He said he would often start by writing a poem and then feed it into the computer along with a newspaper article or whatever and then assemble the lyrics from there. I thought that sounded so cool I always wished I could get my hands on a program like that. Well, of course now a couple variations are available here on the net and they're very easy to use. Here's a link to one of them....
http://www.fetish23.org/words/cutup.html