David Bowie - Changesonebowie

Pitchfork 88

It's easy enough to think there's no need for a reissue of Changesonebowie, the original David Bowie hits compilation, in 2016. In the 40 years years following its initial 1976 release, it has effectively been written out of Bowie's active discography, banished from the catalog after a rush-released 1984 CD. Changesbowie, a 1990 revision designed for compact disc, swapped out the original hit version of “Fame” for a remix but otherwise presented a thorough overview of Bowie's hit-making peak, setting the stage for a flood of digital-era compilations that reworked the same territory. The most recent of these was the shape-shifting 2014 set Nothing Has Changed but 2002's double-disc Best of Bowie is something of a standard bearer, offering 39 hits, including all 11 songs from Changesonebowie. All these compilations have had the effect of making the original greatest hits feel antiquated: it would seem an album made redundant by history.

And, yet, Changesonebowie is an important record in the arc of David Bowie's career—maybe not on the level of The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders From Mars or Low, but it isn't a stretch to say that the album is partially responsible for cementing Bowie's stardom. When Changesonebowie first appeared in May of 1976, Bowie was four years removed from his Ziggy Stardust-fueled UK breakthrough, but he had only recently cracked the US market, with “Fame” hitting number one in 1975. He'd remain in the Billboard Top 10 with Young Americans and Station to Station and, this, the compilation that closed the curtain on the first act of his career.

Bowie would soon decamp to Berlin to reinvent himself as an electronic art-rocker, but Changesonebowie isn't especially interested in his progressive side. Some freakiness lies on its margins—the interstellar folk of “Space Oddity,” the coy sexuality of the non-LP single “John, I'm Only Dancing”—but the anchors here are the heavy rockers: “Ziggy Stardust” and “Suffragette City,” “The Jean Genie,” “Diamond Dogs” and “Rebel Rebel.” Riffs rule all, so loud and hooky they obscure whatever faint hint of camp there may lay underneath Mick Ronson's guitars. Those suggestions of a stranger world—all the allusions to aliens, tramps and zombies—are faint transmissions from the depths of the individual albums, but what's here is Bowie at his simplest. This is quite deliberate. He chose the tracks for Changesonebowie, bypassing actual British hits while elevating “Ziggy Stardust” and “Suffragette City” into the canon by their mere inclusion.

That's because Changesonebowie turned into a major hit upon its release. It is one of the handful of David Bowie albums to be certified as Platinum in the US—it earned that distinction in 1981, five years after it went gold upon its initial release—an honor Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Station to Station, Low, and “Heroes” all missed. Odds are Changesonebowie would be the one Bowie album that you'd find in a record collection in the '70s and early '80s, and it was designed to be that way. It was meant to be cool, stylish and accessible—as glamorous as the Tom Kelley portrait on the cover—which means Changesonebowie deliberately bypasses stranger elements. Absences are abundant, some of them puzzling from the vantage of 2016. “Starman,” his 1972 breakthrough, is absent, as are “Drive-In Saturday,” “Life On Mars?” and “Sorrow,” all singles that peaked at three on the British charts; the Top 10 “Knock On Wood” from 1974's David Live is MIA, too. Nothing from Pin Ups is here, nor is there anything from The Man Who Sold The World, not even the title track which is a modern-day standard thanks to Nirvana's MTV Unplugged In New York rendition in 1994.

Yet, as this economical compilation plays, none of these tunes are missed. There's an elegance to the structure of Changesonebowie, with its near chronological sequencing lending the album a narrative: it is the story of Bowie's metamorphosis from a quizzical folkie to a conquering colossus. As Changesonebowie progresses, the music expands: the brawny glam turns ornate on the second side and then slides into soul, with the funky rhythms supplying an artful ascendance. “Golden Years” ends the compilation on a note of triumph: it plays as a celebration of the self-reinvention showcased on Changesonebowie.

This moment of triumph didn't last long. He traded celebrity for art in 1977, throwing himself off the populist path Changesonebowie carves. But the record itself endured, as records do. Audiences who never found much patience of the cubist synths and uneasy aural pools of the Berlin years would find solace with the songs on Changesonebowie, whether they were heard on this old LP, a new hits collection or, most likely, on the classic rock radio that embraced these songs for the very reason they were included on the comp in the first place: these are the tracks that present Bowie at his hardest and straightest. Collected, they provide a summation of his peak as a rock star and, in some ways, remain an excellent introduction to his work: it doesn't tell you everything you need to know, but it captures Bowie's essence and repackages it as a roaring good time. That's reason enough for Changesonebowie to be back in circulation.