Thursday 15th March

This was by one of my all-time musical loves, David Bowie.  Like a lot of Artists from the sixties and seventies David had a tough time in the Eighties and Nineties, trying various styles and production sounds as if trying on different clothes in an attempt to stay looking young.  Bowies essential genius rarely left him completely though, and after the awful and largely forgettable Earthling he came up with a much gentler and softer sound for the 1999 album ‘Hours’.   The songs were gentler too, and more melodic.  The first single was Thursdays Child, quite a simple and delicate little song, not at all what one normally expected from Bowie.  I think it bombed, or at least wasn’t the hit his record company might have been expecting.   It would seem from the prolonged silence since 2003 and ‘Reality’ that David may have all but given up recording songs, at least for the forsee-able future.  Maybe he has nothing new to say, or perhaps he doesn’t need the money so much nowadays, or possibly he realizes that his most creative days are long behind him and anything he does now will always be compared badly to the likes of Ziggy Stardust.  I suspect however that he just isn’t into music that much these days, he was notorious for writing songs just before going in to record them, so maybe he hasn’t lost the talent at all but just doesn’t feel the muse at the moment.  I don’t really mind; he has a huge back catalogue so there is no shortage of Bowie material out there, and who knows how long we may have to wait for anything new, if it ever comes.  The album ‘Hours’ though always did seem a bit out of order, as if it should have come way back in his career, maybe between The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory (my all-time most loved of his records).

I really like the record though, and of his later albums it is by far my favourite; and when thinking of songs with days of the week in them there really was no other choice but ‘Thursday’s Child.’