BowieADay 2025
While 1001 Other Albums wasn’t yet around last January, for those who follow my personal Mastodon account, you may have seen that I do a deep dive into David Bowie’s discography this time every year. Ever since Bowie left us in 2016, I’ve focused my listening time each January around his discography, starting on his birthday (January 8, aka “Bowiemas”) through to the anniversary of him leaving us (January 10, aka “Bowienalia”) until the end of the month (or later).
While in previous years I’ve typically crammed in as much Bowie as humanly possible, after a few of you expressed interest in joining me this year (yay!!!), I’ve decided to structure my Bowie vigil a bit more so we can all listen to the same albums together. And, since we learned our lesson after the whirlwind that was #TomWaitsAWeek, we’ve decided to take our time with Bowie, simply listening to one studio album a day in chronological order – a total of 26 albums over 26 days – with the option of listening to any extras on our own. Though we still have a few Bowie albums on The List to spotlight, unlike our Tom Waits week, I won’t be writing all those up to match our listening schedule this time around. However, we do have an excellent guest spotlight on the Low album lined up in time, so look for that next week (edit: here!). (Edit: We’re now planning on doing a community-wide, oral history sort of spotlight for Blackstar on its 10-year anniversary next year, January 8, 2026. Please message me if you’d like your thoughts included!)
In case anyone else wants to join us, below is our listening schedule (complete with listening links), and we’ll be using the hashtag #BowieADay to toot our thoughts about it as we go through the albums. For any of you wanting some extra credit, I’ve added some suggested bonus listening, as well as other goodies. Note the bonus picks are by no means exhaustive. Aside from all the music videos/interviews/etc. the Internets provides, there’s been a TON of live albums and other previously unreleased stuff put out posthumously that you might want to explore on your own. I also highly recommend perusing Chris O’Leary’s in-depth look into every single Bowie song, as found on his Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog and collected/edited in his two books, Rebel Rebel: All the Songs of David Bowie from ’64 to ’76 and Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016. I’ll be adding more bonus content as we go through the schedule, so feel free to check back later.
Happy listening!
#BowieADay 2025 Listening Schedule
- January 8: David Bowie (1967)
- January 9: David Bowie (aka Space Oddity) (1969)
- Bonus: The ‘Mercury’ Demos (recorded in 1969, released 2019); Toy (mostly re-workings of songs originally from 1964-71, recorded in 2000 and released 2021)
- January 10: The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
- Bonus: Again, perhaps listen to Blackstar, simply because Bowie left us on this day, leaving this album as his final parting gift.
- January 11: Hunky Dory (1971)
- January 12: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
- Bonus: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture film (1979) or soundtrack (1983). The version of “My Death” in the film/soundtrack is an absolute must-hear, in particular.
- January 13: Aladdin Sane (1973)
- January 14: Pin Ups (1973)
- Bonus: If you want to skip ahead a bit, also listen to Low, released OTD.
- January 15: Diamond Dogs (1974)
- January 16: Young Americans (1975)
- January 17: Station to Station (1976)
- January 18: Low (1977) [blog feature]
- January 19: “Heroes” (1977)
- January 20: Lodger (1979)
- January 21: Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
- January 22: Let’s Dance (1983)
- January 23: Tonight (1984)
- January 24: Never Let Me Down (1987)
- Bonus: If NLMD let you down (a likely situation), perhaps check out Tin Machine today! Tin Machine was a short-lived group with Bowie on vocals, Reeves Gabrels on guitar, Tony Fox Sales on bass and vocals, and Hunt Sales on drums. They put out 2 LPs, and there’s also 2 live albums:
- January 25: Black Tie White Noise (1993)
- January 26: The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)
- January 27: 1. Outside (The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper Cycle) (1995)
- January 28: EART HL I NG (1997)
- January 29: ‘hours…’ (1999)
- January 30: Heathen (2002)
- January 31: Reality (2003)
- February 1: The Next Day (2013)
- February 2: ★ (aka Blackstar) (2016)
- Bonus: The musical Lazarus, by Bowie and Irish playwright Enda Walsh, is meant to be a sort of sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth, featuring the same main character, Thomas Newton, with Bowie songs as the soundtrack. The original cast recording (2016) features stunning performances from Michael C. Hall, Sophia Anne Caruso, Cristin Milioti, and Michael Esper, and includes tracks from the posthumously released No Plan EP (2017).
- Moar bonus: I would also highly suggest Donny McCaslin – Beyond Now, featuring the same band that’s on Blackstar (McCaslin on sax, Tim Lefebvre on bass, Jason Linder on keys, and Mark Guiliana on drums) and a couple Bowie covers. ALSO, the recent documentary Moonage Daydream (2022) is a positively stunning film that any Bowie fan should see.
#Bowie #BowieADay #DavidBowie #music #musicDiscovery #Musodon #TomWaitsAWeek
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