My Month of Bowie, day 16: 'Tonight' (1984)

Did David Bowie repeat the success of Let's Dance with Tonight?

The album: Tonight (EMI America, 1984)

Bowie prays for an Auntie Anne's pretzel.

My thoughts: What was it about white British rockers and reggae music? Between the 1960s and the 1980s, they all took a sacred pledge to try it at least once. Remember that it was Eric Clapton, not Bob Marley, who topped the charts with "I Shot the Sheriff." But they all dabbled, everyone from Elton John and Paul McCartney to The Police and The Clash. I guess that, in 1984, it was finally David Bowie's turn. I'd like to imagine that he got an ominous letter in the mail with a picture of a skull with dreadlocks on the envelope. On the inside, there was a note reading: "YOU'RE NEXT." So he dutifully went into the studio and recorded his album, Tonight.

Bowie's sixteenth studio LP does not have a great critical reputation, and before embarking on this project, I was largely unaware of it. At the time of its release, the album did what it needed to do: sell some copies and keep David Bowie in the public eye for another year. He retained a lot of the personnel from Let's Dance (1983) but not producer Nile Rodgers. The result was a collection of what I'd call shopping mall music. Most of Tonight sounds like what you'd hear while picking out a new blazer at Chess King. Each copy should have come with a coupon for Orange Julius or Sbarro. Some of the slower, more sensual tracks could work as background music in a Cinemax softcore porn movie. 

Bowie himself trudges through the nine songs like Eeyore on quaaludes. I'm not sure what Bowie's sobriety situation was in 1984, but maybe he needed to get back on coke. So what are the points of interest this time around? Well, we have a seven-minute opening epic called "Loving the Alien." And could there be a more perfect title for a David Bowie song? There was even a posthumously-released Bowie box set by that name in 2018, plus a 1998 Bowie biography by Christopher Sandford. The song itself is decent, but I wasn't wild about the very '80s arrangement and production. I wish David could have recorded this track with his '70s band.

What else do we have here? Tina Turner shows up on the title track. That's nice, even if the song is a little bland for my taste. David's rowdiest pal, Iggy Pop, swings by for the album-closing "Dancing with the Big Boys," which sounds like a prototype for Peter Gabriel's "Big Time." Elsewhere on the album, "Neighborhood Threat" sounds a lot like Danny Elfman's theme song for the sitcom Sledge Hammer! (1986-1988). They may even use the same drum machine, for all I know.

I suppose the song that caught my attention the most was David's mournful cover of "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys. I hadn't even glanced at the track listing for Tonight, so I didn't know the song was coming. Bowie slows the song way down and sings it as a dirge. Does it work? I can't really say, though it's more entertaining than most of Tonight. Again, I wish he'd done this same song maybe ten years earlier in his career.

I don't want to give the impression that Tonight is a catastrophe or an embarrassment. It's fine to have playing in the background at a party or something, even if "God Only Knows" might kill the vibe under such circumstances. What it lacks is urgency. "Blue Jean" isn't even his best "Jean" song. (That's "Jean Genie" on 1973's Aladdin Sane.) David was running dangerously low on inspiration when he cut this album, but EMI America must have needed something to fill a hole in their release schedule. Tonight is a take-it-or-leave-it album. I'm leaving it, personally, but I wouldn't blame you for taking it.

Next: Never Let Me Down (1987)