Hunky Dory is the fourth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released in the United Kingdom on 17December 1971 through RCA Records. Following a break from touring and recording, Bowie settled down to write new songs, composing on piano rather than guitar as in earlier works. Bowie assembled Mick Ronson (guitar), Trevor Bolder (bass) and Mick Woodmansey (drums), and recorded the album in mid-1971 at Trident Studios in London. Rick Wakeman contributed piano shortly before joining Yes. Bowie co-produced the album with Ken Scott, who had engineered Bowie's previous two records.
Compared to the guitar-driven hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World, Bowie opted for a warmer, more melodic piano-based pop rock and art pop style on Hunky Dory. His lyrical concerns on the record range from the compulsive nature of artistic reinvention on "Changes" to occultism and Nietzschean philosophy on "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Quicksand"; several songs make cultural and literary references. He was also inspired by his United States tour to write songs dedicated to three American icons: Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. The song "Kooks" was dedicated to Bowie's newborn son Duncan. The album's cover artwork, photographed in monochrome and subsequently recoloured, features Bowie in a pose inspired by actresses of the Hollywood Golden Age.
RCA offered little promotion for Hunky Dory and its lead single "Changes", wary that Bowie would transform his image shortly. Thus, despite very positive reviews from the British and American music press, the album initially sold poorly and failed to chart. After the commercial breakthrough of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album in 1972, Hunky Dory garnered renewed interest, with sales peaking at number three on the UK Albums Chart. Retrospectively, Hunky Dory has been critically acclaimed as one of Bowie's best works, and features on several lists of the greatest albums of all time. Within the context of his career, Hunky Dory is considered the album where "Bowie starts to become Bowie", definitively discovering his voice and style.|source=—David Bowie discussing how America impacted the album, 1999|width=20%|align=left|style=padding:8px;
The Man Who Sold the World was released in the United States through Mercury Records in November 1970. The album sold poorly but fared better both critically and commercially in the US than in the UK. It was played on American radio stations frequently and its "heavy rock content" increased interest in Bowie. The critical success of the album prompted Mercury to send Bowie on a promotional radio tour of the US in February 1971. The trip inspired him to write tribute songs for three American icons: the artist Andy Warhol, the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the rock band the Velvet Underground, more specifically their singer Lou Reed. Scott accepted the position as a way to gain experience, although at the time he didn't believe Bowie would become a huge star. His debut as a producer, Scott borrowed some of the acoustic sounds of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass (1970), an album he engineered. Scott retained the role of co-producer for Bowie's next three records: Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups. Bowie played demos for Scott and the two picked which ones would be recorded for the album. On 8June, the band recorded "Song for Bob Dylan", although according to Nicholas Pegg this version was scrapped and the released version was not recorded until 23June. Scott later recalled that recording went very quickly: "Almost everything was done in one take." Discussing Bowie's vocals, Scott stated: "He was unique. [He is] the only singer I ever worked with where virtually every take was a master." Bolder described recording with Bowie for the first time as a "nerve-wracking experience": "When that red light came on in the studio it was, God, in at the deep end or what!" As a co-producer Bowie took an active interest in the album's sound and arrangements, an about-face from his generally hands-off attitude during the Man Who Sold the World sessions.
thumb|left|upright=0.8|alt=Rick Wakeman performing in 2012|[[Rick Wakeman (pictured in 2012), whose piano playing greatly influenced the songs]]
Rick Wakeman, noted session musician and member of the Strawbs, plays piano on the album; he previously played Mellotron on David Bowie (1969). In 1995 he recalled that he met with Bowie in late June 1971 at Haddon Hall, where he heard demos of "Changes" and "Life on Mars?" in "their raw brilliance ... the finest selection of songs I have ever heard in one sitting in my entire life ... I couldn't wait to get into the studio and record them." According to Wakeman, the first few sessions started poorly as the band had not learned the songs. He recalled that Bowie had to halt the sessions, telling the musicians off and to come back when they knew the music. When they returned after a week, Wakeman thought "the band were hot! They were so good, and the tracks just flowed through." This story has been contested by other band members, including Bolder, who told the biographer Kevin Cann: "[That's] rubbish. David would never have told the band off in the studio. Especially as Mick and Woody had already left him once, and everyone was now getting on. The band would not have survived that – it definitely didn't happen." Scott contended: "I definitely don't remember that, and it's not something I would forget. I would definitely dispute that one."
On 9July, with Wakeman in the line-up, Bowie and the band recorded two takes of "Bombers" and "It Ain't Easy", the latter featuring backing vocals by Dana Gillespie. Five days later, the group recorded four takes of "Quicksand", the last of which appears on the finished album. On 18July, the group spent the day rehearsing and mixing. Further mixing sessions were carried out between 21 and 26July to compile a promotional album for Gem Productions. By this point, the songs "Oh! You Pretty Things", "Eight Line Poem", "Kooks", "Queen Bitch" and "Andy Warhol" had been recorded; the mixes of "Eight Line Poem" and "Kooks" on the promotional album differed from the final versions on Hunky Dory. "The Bewlay Brothers" and "Changes" were recorded on 30July. On 6August, the band recorded "Life on Mars?" and "Song for Bob Dylan", after which the recording process was considered finished. Before the sessions ended, Bowie asked Wakeman if he wanted to be a part of the Spiders from Mars. Wakeman declined and joined the progressive rock band Yes instead.
Songs
After the hard rock sound of The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory features a stylistic shift towards art pop and melodic pop rock. The songs are mostly piano-led rather than guitar-led. The biographer Marc Spitz believes the piano incites a warmer feel on this record compared to its two predecessors. Christopher Sandford states that "the songs [are] characterised by the lush ambience established by Bowie's vocal and the piano" and, along with Elton John and Phil Collins, helped create music on the "easy-listening continuum". Lior Phillips of Consequence of Sound wrote that the songs are accessible, both musically and lyrically, allowing the listener to dissect them again and again. The music journalist Peter Doggett concurs, regarding Hunky Dory as "a collective of attractively accessible pop songs, through which Bowie tested out his feelings about the nature of stardom and power". Rick Quinn described the songs in PopMatters as a fusion of "British pop, orchestral works, art-rock, folk and ballads" that emerge to form glam rock.
Robert Dimery, in his book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, calls it "a toybox of acoustic oddities, tributes to heroes and surrealism". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic describes it as "a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie's sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class".
Side one
The opening track, "Changes", is built around a distinctive piano riff. The lyrics focus on the compulsive nature of artistic reinvention and distancing oneself from the rock mainstream. The biographer David Buckley writes that "strange fascination" is a phrase that "embodies a continued quest for the new and the bizarre". Pegg summarises the lyrics as Bowie "holding a mirror to his face" just as he is about to achieve stardom. Doggett notes that "Changes" is a "statement of purpose": as the opening track, the song provided a stark contrast to the hard rock sound found on its predecessor. The song was also unlike "Space Oddity" and its 1969 parent album, but rather "pure, unashamedly melodic, gleefully commercial, gorgeously mellifluous pop".
"Oh! You Pretty Things" was the first track written for the album. The piano style has been compared to the Beatles' "Martha My Dear". The lyrics reference the teachings of the occultist Aleister Crowley and his Golden Dawn and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly with the lines "the homo superior", "the golden ones" and "homo sapiens have outgrown their use". "Homo Superior" refers to Nietzsche's theory of Übermensch, or "Superman". The music itself provides a contrast to the darker themes. Doggett describes Bowie's vocal performance as "quite unadorned, presented so starkly ... that it [is] almost unsettling".
Designed to sound like a "continuation" of the previous track, "Eight Line Poem" is described by Pegg as the album's most "overlooked" song. It features Bowie on a gentle, sporadic piano while he sings and a country-influenced guitar line from Ronson. Exactly eight lines long, the lyrics describe a room where a cat just knocked over a spinning mobile and a cactus sits in a window. Doggett believes there is a metaphor between the cactus and a prairie. At the time of the album's release, Bowie described the song as the city that is "a kind of high-life wart on the backside of the prairie".
"Life on Mars?" is described by Buckley as a "soaring, cinematic ballad". Although Bowie was fixated on becoming Ziggy Stardust at the time of its recording, the song has no connection to Mars itself; the title was a reference to the recent media frenzy of the US and Soviet Union racing to get to the red planet. The song is a parody of singer Frank Sinatra's "My Way", an English-language translation of the French song "Comme d'habitude", and uses the same chord sequence for its opening bars. The handwritten notes on the back cover say "Inspired by Frankie". Like most songs on the album, "Life on Mars?" is mostly piano-led, but features a string arrangement from Ronson – his first – that is described by Doggett as "gargantuan". Bowie's vocals – recorded in one take – are delivered passionately during the chorus and almost nasally in the verses. He mentions "the girl with the mousy hair", whose identity commentators have debated, and who according to Greene "goes to the movies as an escape from life". The chorus sings about Bowie mincing his "satin and tat" as a reference to the dancer Lindsay Kemp. Pegg states: "Part of the genius of 'Queen Bitch' is that it filters the archness of Marc Bolan and Kemp through the streetwise attitude of Reed: this is a song that succeeds in making the phrase 'bipperty-bopperty hat' sound raunchy and cool." Daryl Easlea of BBC Music writes that the song's glam rock sound foreshadowed the direction Bowie took on Ziggy Stardust.
Although Bowie normally waited to name his albums until the last possible moment, the title "Hunky Dory" was announced at the John Peel session. Grace got the idea from an Esher pub landlord. He told Peter and Leni Gillman, the authors of Alias David Bowie, that the landlord had an unusual vocabulary that was infused with "upper-crust jargon" such as "prang" and "whizzo" and "everything's hunky-dory". Grace told Bowie, who loved it. Pegg notes that there was a song from 1957 by American doo-wop band the Guytones also titled "Hunky Dory" that may also have played a part. Spitz states that "hunky-dory" is an English slang term that means everything is right in the world. The original UK cover featured Bowie's name and the album title; in the US the title was instead printed on a sticker and placed onto the translucent wrapping. According to Cann, initial UK pressings were laminated, which enhanced the colour to create a "superior finish"; these pressings are now collector's items. The back cover featured Bowie's handwritten notes about each song from the album. It also bore the credit "Produced by Ken Scott (assisted by the actor)" – the "actor" being Bowie himself, whose "pet conceit", in the words of the NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray, was "to think of himself as an actor".
Release
thumb|Left to right: [[Dana Gillespie, Tony Defries and David Bowie at Andy Warhol's Pork at London's Roundhouse in 1971.]]
A few months after he had terminated Bowie's contract with Mercury, Defries showcased the newly recorded Hunky Dory to multiple labels in the US, including New York City's RCA Records. Defries told RCA that they "had nothing since the fifties" but they could "own the seventies" if they hired Bowie. "Because David Bowie is going to remake the decade, just like the Beatles did in the sixties." Its head Dennis Katz had never heard of Bowie but recognised the potential of the piano-based songs that Defries played for him and signed the artist to a three-record deal on 9September 1971; RCA would be Bowie's label for the rest of the decade.
Hunky Dory was released in the UK on 17December 1971 through RCA. By this time, the sessions for Ziggy Stardust were underway. The album release was supported by the single "Changes" on 7January 1972. The album received little promotion from RCA due to its unusual cover image and a warning that Bowie would be changing his image for his next album. Pegg writes that there were disagreements over how much money was put into the album and whether Bowie was an "unproven one-hit-wonder". Marketing manager Geoff Hannington recalled in 1986: "We soon knew we were in a situation where the artist was going to change like a chameleon from time to time." Because of this, the album initially sold poorly and failed to break the UK Albums Chart. According to Sandford, the album barely sold 5,000 copies in the first quarter.
It was only after the breakthrough of Ziggy Stardust in mid-1972 that Hunky Dory became a commercial success. It climbed to number three in the UK (two places higher than Ziggy Stardust), and remained on the chart for 69 weeks. Hunky Dory also peaked at number 39 on the Kent Music Report in Australia. Gallucci writes that although the album did not make Bowie a star, it "got him noticed", and the success of Ziggy Stardust helped Hunky Dory garner a larger audience. In the US, John Mendelsohn of Rolling Stone called the album Bowie's "most engaging album musically" up to that point and praised his songwriting, particularly his ability to convey ideas without employing "a barrage of seemingly impregnable verbiage". Billboard gave the album a positive review, praising it as "a heavy debut for RCA, loaded with the kind of Top 40 and FM appeal that should break him through big on the charts. Strong material, his own, for programming includes 'Changes', 'Oh! You Pretty Things', and 'Life on Mars?'". In the Los Angeles Times, Robert Hilburn believed that, compared to his first three albums, Hunky Dory assured that Bowie deserved a spot amongst the "most important pop music figures" of the time. He further described Bowie as a "major talent", praising the album's instrumentation, vocal performances and themes.
Several reviewers praised Bowie as an artist. The New York Times wrote that with Hunky Dory, Bowie became "the most intellectually brilliant man yet to choose the long-playing album as his medium of expression", while Rock magazine called him "the most singularly gifted artist making music today. He has the genius to be to the '70s what Lennon, McCartney, Jagger and Dylan were to the '60s." In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau hailed Bowie as "a singer-composer with brains, imagination, and a good idea of how to use a recording console", and the album "a quick change tour de force that is both catchy and deeply felt". In the publication's annual Pazz & Jop poll, Hunky Dory ranked as the year's 18th best album.
Retrospective reviews
Hunky Dory has continued to receive critical acclaim and is regarded as one of Bowie's best works. Many reviewers have praised the songwriting, with a writer for Blender calling the songs some of the best Bowie has ever written. Erlewine wrote: "On the surface, [having] such a wide range of styles and sounds would make an album incoherent, but Bowie's improved songwriting and determined sense of style instead made Hunky Dory a touchstone for reinterpreting pop's traditions into fresh, postmodern pop music". Douglas Wolk of Pitchfork reviewed the album's remaster for the 2015 box set Five Years 1969–1973 and gave it a 10-out-of-10 rating, believing the songs to be "scattered but splendid" and finding Bowie's songwriting a "huge leap" from his previous works.
Influence and legacy
Many biographers and reviewers have agreed that Hunky Dory marked the beginning of Bowie's artistic success. Pegg writes: "Hunky Dory stands at the first great crossroads in Bowie's career. It was his last album until Low to be presented purely as a sonic artefact rather than a vehicle for the dramatic visual element with which he was soon to make his name as a performer". Buckley notes that 1971 was a pivotal year for Bowie, the year in which he became "something of a pop-art agent provocateur". In a time when rock musicians looked to traditions and established standards, Bowie looked to be radically different and challenge tradition, reinventing himself again and again, thereby creating new standards and conventions. Buckley further said: "Its almost easy-listening status and conventional musical sensibility has detracted from the fact that, lyrically, this record lays down the blueprint for Bowie's future career". Spitz writes that many artists have their "it all came together on this one" record. "For David Bowie, it's Hunky Dory". The biographer Paul Trynka states that the record marked a "new beginning" for the artist and that has a "freshness" to it that all of Bowie's previous studio albums lacked, primarily because when making his previous albums, Bowie was working to satisfy record executives. When making Hunky Dory, Bowie was working to satisfy himself, which is reflected in the record.
BBC Music's Daryl Easlea wrote that the album saw Bowie finding his own voice after "scrabbling around stylistically" for almost a decade and "finally demonstrated [his] enormous potential to the listening public". Schrieber stated: "Hunky Dory marked the true start of what would be one of the most successful careers in rock music, spawning millions of scarily obsessive fans." in 2000 the same magazine placed it at number 16 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. The album ranked number 16 and number 23 in the 1998 and 2000 editions of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums, respectively. In their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Rolling Stone ranked it number 107 in 2003, number 108 in the 2012 revised list, and number 88 in the 2020 revised list. In 2004, Pitchfork ranked the album 80th on their list of the 100 Best Albums of the 1970s, one place above Ziggy Stardust. In the same year, VH1 placed it 47th in their list of the 100 greatest albums. In 2010, Time magazine chose it as one of the 100 best albums of all time, with journalist Josh Tyrangiel praising Bowie's "earthbound ambition to be a boho poet with prodigal style". The same year, Consequence of Sound ranked the album number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest albums of all time. In 2013, NME ranked the album third in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, behind the Beatles' Revolver and the Smiths' The Queen Is Dead. In 2015, Ultimate Classic Rock included it in their list of the 100 best rock albums from the 1970s. In 2021, Spin ranked it the sixth best album of 1971. Robert Dimery included the album in his 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Reissues
The album has been reissued multiple times. Following its release on compact disc in the mid-1980s, Hunky Dory was rereleased by Rykodisc/EMI in 1990 with bonus tracks, including the outtake "Bombers". In 1999, the original album was rereleased on CD through Virgin/EMI with 24-bit digitally remastered sound. This edition was reissued in 2014 by Parlophone, having acquired the Virgin-owned Bowie catalogue. In 2015, the album was remastered for the Five Years (1969–1973) box set. It was released in CD, vinyl, and digital formats, both as part of this compilation and separately. In 2021, to celebrate the record's 50th anniversary, Parlophone announced a vinyl picture disc reissue of the album (2015 remaster), which was released on 7January 2022. The announcement coincided with the digital release of a new mix of "Changes" by Scott. In November 2022, a multi-disc box set focusing on Hunky Dory was released with the title Divine Symmetry: The Journey to Hunky Dory. The collection comprises home demos, BBC radio sessions, alternate mixes, and other live and studio recordings from 1971. It also includes the 2015 remaster, as well as an "alternative" version of Hunky Dory, made up of alternate mixes; the latter was released separately on vinyl in February 2023.
Track listing
All tracks are written by David Bowie, except "Fill Your Heart", written by Biff Rose and Paul Williams.
Side one
- "Changes" – 3:37
- "Oh! You Pretty Things" – 3:12
- "Eight Line Poem" – 2:55
- "Life on Mars?" – 3:43
- "Kooks" – 2:53
- "Quicksand" – 5:08
Side two
- "Fill Your Heart" – 3:07
- "Andy Warhol" – 3:56
- "Song for Bob Dylan" – 4:12
- "Queen Bitch" – 3:18
- "The Bewlay Brothers" – 5:22
Personnel
Album credits per the Hunky Dory liner notes and biographer Nicholas Pegg, "Eight Line Poem")</small>
- Mick Ronson – guitar, vocals, Mellotron, arrangements, recorder <small>("Life on Mars?")</small>
- Trevor Bolder – bass guitar, trumpet
- Mick Woodmansey – drums
- Rick Wakeman – piano
- Ken Scott – ARP synthesiser <small>("Andy Warhol")</small>
Production
- Ken Scott – producer, recording engineer, mixing engineer
- David Bowie – producer
- Brian Ward – photography
- Terry Pastor – cover design
Charts
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" border="1"
|+1972 chart performance for Hunky Dory
!scope="col"|Chart (1972)
!scope="col"|Peak<br />position
|-
!scope="row"|Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)
|align="center"|39
|-
! scope="row" | Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)
| align="center" | 15
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" border="1"
|+2016 chart performance for Hunky Dory
!scope="col"|Chart (2016)
!scope="col"|Peak<br />position
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|New Zealand Albums (RIANZ)
|align="center"|30
|-
!scope="row"|Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)
|align="center"|23
|-
|-
|-
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" border="1"
|+2022 chart performance for Hunky Dory
!scope="col"|Chart (2022)
!scope="col"|Peak<br />position
|-
|-
|-
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
|+2016 year-end chart performance for Hunky Dory
!scope="col"|Chart (2016)
!scope="col"|Position
|-
!scope="row"|UK Albums (OCC)
|align="center"|83
|}