Tonight is the sixteenth studio album by the English singer-songwriter David Bowie, released on 24 September 1984 through EMI America Records. The follow-up to his most commercially successful album Let's Dance, it was written and recorded in mid-1984 at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Canada, following the conclusion of the Serious Moonlight Tour. Bowie, Derek Bramble and Hugh Padgham co-produced the album. Many of the same personnel from Let's Dance and the accompanying tour returned for Tonight, with a few additions. Much of Bowie's creative process was the same as he used on Let's Dance, similarly playing no instruments and offering little creative input to the musicians.
The music on Tonight has been characterised as pop, blue-eyed soul, dance and rock. Much of the album's sound is the same as its predecessor's, due to Bowie's effort to retain the new audience that he had recently attracted, although some tracks contain R&B and reggae influences. Devoid of new ideas from touring, Bowie wrote only two new songs himself. Three songs, including the title track, were covers of songs by Iggy Pop, who was present during most of the sessions and co-wrote two tracks. The title track is a duet with singer Tina Turner. The artwork, featuring Bowie blue-painted against an oil painting backdrop, was designed by Mick Haggerty.
Supported by the singles "Blue Jean", "Tonight" and "Loving the Alien", Tonight was a commercial success, reaching number one on the UK Albums Chart. Critical reception was poor, with most finding a lack of creativity. Following the critical dismissal of his next studio album Never Let Me Down (1987), Bowie expressed dissatisfaction with this period, calling Tonight not one of his stronger efforts, a sentiment echoed by later commentators. He did not tour to support the album and only performed "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean" on subsequent tours. The album was remastered in 2018 as part of the box set Loving the Alien (1983–1988).
Background and development
thumb|upright|alt=A long photograph of a man with bleached blonde hair and a white suit speaking into a microphone|Bowie performing on the [[Serious Moonlight Tour in 1983]]
David Bowie released his 15th studio album Let's Dance in April 1983. A major commercial success, it propelled him to worldwide megastardom. He supported the album with the successful Serious Moonlight Tour from May to December 1983. Despite its success, Bowie found himself at a creative stalemate; he realised he no longer knew his audience and later admitted that touring left him devoid of new ideas. At the tour's conclusion, Bowie went on holiday in Bali and Java with his friend, singer Iggy Pop. Pop, having suffered from poor finances for several years, earned royalties from the success of Bowie's recording of "China Girl" and the two were eager to work together on Bowie's next project. Bowie felt he was ill-prepared to record a new album, instead proposing a live album called Serious Moonlight.|source=—Bowie on the recording process for Tonight|width=30%|align=right|style=padding:8px;
Recording for the new album began at Le Studio in May 1984, less than five months after the Serious Moonlight Tour. Bowie arrived for the sessions with eight of the nine songs that would appear on the album. This surprised collaborator Carlos Alomar, who said "it was the first time in the eleven years that I've been with the damn man that he's brought in anything". Padgham later revealed in the BBC Radio 2 documentary Golden Years that there was a "falling out" with Bramble towards the end of the sessions, leading to his departure and Padgham taking over as producer. Padgham hated many of the songs, specifically the "too poppy" "Blue Jean" and "Tonight", preferring the "more left-field" compositions that were left off the final album. He later expressed regret that he lacked the confidence to finish the other songs, telling Buckley: "Who am I to say to Mr. David Bowie that his songs suck?"
Songs
Commentators have characterised Tonight as pop, Author James E. Perone recognises the presence of reggae, R&B and ska. Bowie purposefully made the album's sound similar to Let's Dance and the Serious Moonlight Tour because he felt the new fans expected to hear the same thing on the new album as the one before. Of the nine songs on the final album, Bowie was the sole writer for only two, "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean"; two were co-written by Bowie and Pop, "Tumble and Twirl" and "Dancing with the Big Boys"; and the remaining five are cover versions, three originally by Pop: "Don't Look Down" (from 1979's New Values), "Tonight" and "Neighborhood Threat" (both from 1977's Lust for Life). The other covers are the Beach Boys' 1966 song "God Only Knows", which was reportedly shortlisted for Bowie's 1973 covers album Pin Ups, and the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller-penned "I Keep Forgettin", originally made famous by Chuck Jackson in 1962. Bowie explained: "I think that [Tonight] gave me a chance, like Pin Ups did a few years ago, to do some covers that I always wanted to do."
Side one
Bowie described "Loving the Alien" as a very personal bit of writing that he did not feel fitted in with the rest of the album because it is such a dark song amidst lighter fare. He said, "Alien' came about because of my feeling that so much history is wrong – as is being rediscovered all the time – and that we base so much on the wrong knowledge that we've gleaned." Alomar thought the song concerned the Major Tom character from 1969's "Space Oddity", a claim Bowie rejected. The lyrics are religious and politically charged. While Pegg believes it to be a terrific song, he finds it weighed down by "over-elaborate production". Bowie later admitted that the demo was superior. The reworking of "Don't Look Down" is influenced by reggae music. Bowie had attempted it in different ways, including jazz rock, march and ska, eventually settling on reggae. O'Leary found Bowie's version stripped the power of Pop's original. Lyrically, Bowie ponders how short-lived stardom can be.
thumb|upright=0.7|alt=Tina Turner performing in 1985|[[Tina Turner (pictured in 1985) performs guest vocals on the title track.]]
Bowie's rendition of "God Only Knows" incorporates strings and saxophone, and he sings his vocal in a croon. Although Bowie defended his recording in a contemporary 1984 interview with Charles Shaar Murray, his biographers deride it as "nadir" and one of the worst recordings of his entire career. For "Tonight", Bowie eliminated Pop's original spoken word introduction, believing it an "idiosyncratic thing of [Pop's] that it seemed not part of my vocabulary".
Side two
"Neighborhood Threat" features a heavier guitar sound than Pop's original, although Pegg says that Bowie's version lacks the original's "doom-laden percussion and wall-of-sound atmospherics". Bowie himself later expressed regret covering the song, calling it "disastrous". It is an "uptempo throwback" to 1950s and 1960s artists, particularly Eddie Cochran. Later dubbed by Bowie as "sexist rock 'n' roll", Buckley calls it a "fine pop song", albeit "slightly run-of-the-mill by Bowie's standards".
"Tumble and Twirl" recounts Bowie and Pop's exploits while holidaying in Bali and Java at the conclusion of the Serious Moonlight Tour. It features a blue-painted Bowie with his hair dyed dark brown, against a backdrop of oil-paint coating and flowers. Several commentators have compared it to the works of Gilbert & George. For the design, Bowie asked Haggarty to create "something heroic", pointing to Vladimir Tretchikoff's painting of a blue-skinned Chinese woman for reference. backed by "Dancing with the Big Boys". It was a commercial success, peaking at number six in the UK and number eight in the US, mostly promoted with an elaborate 21-minute short film directed by Julien Temple. Partly inspired by the video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller", Jazzin' for Blue Jean was shot in August 1984 and features Bowie in dual roles: as Vic, a man with his eye on a girl and as Screaming' Lord Byron, a flamboyant rock star whose forthcoming gig provides the man with a date. Bowie performs "Blue Jean" as Byron towards the end of the film; a shorter music video for "Blue Jean" was shot a few days later. Bowie and Temple worked together again on the 1986 film Absolute Beginners.
EMI America Records released Tonight on 24 September 1984, nine months after the end of the Serious Moonlight Tour. On 21 November, the album became Bowie's first to be released on the CD format, exclusively in Japan. Coming off the successes of the previous album and tour, and his appearance in the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Tonight continued Bowie's run of commercial successes, peaking at number one on the UK Albums Chart and the Dutch Album Top 100. When the box set Loving the Alien (1983–1988) was released in 2018, it included a disc using the original Dance cover art, albeit with different content.
Critical reception
Upon its release, Tonight was greeted with mostly negative reactions, although it did receive some positive attention. Murray complimented the record's "dizzying variety of mood and technique" in NME, while Billboard said that "the once and future [Bowie] takes yet another turn, saving more edgy, passionate dance-rock for the second side while throwing the spotlight on surprisingly restrained ballads and mid-tempo rockers". Cash Box was also positive, highlighting a number of strong songs and stating that Bowie "loses none of his unique songwriting and vocal adventurousness" with an album that lies in the "same commercial vein" as Let's Dance.
Other reviewers criticised it for lacking creativity. In 1989, he stated that both efforts had "great material that got simmered down to product level", believing the demos were superior compared to the studio recordings. Four years later, he said he was indifferent about what he was doing and he "let everyone tell [him] what to do".
Retrospective reviews
Retrospectively, Tonight is generally considered one of Bowie's worst releases. Several critics have described the album as a "mixed bag" with only a few standouts—namely "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean", and felt the material was inferior to Let's Dance. Others felt that the record lacked the creative risk that defined Bowie's earlier works. Perone argues that the album stands as an inconsistent collection of individual songs rather than a cohesive album. Amongst negative reviews, author Christopher Sandford called it Bowie's "first serious studio misfire since the days of 'The Laughing Gnome' [1967]"; Buckley and Rob Sheffield both referred to Tonight as a "[near]-artistic" and "career-freezing" disaster, respectively; and O'Leary dismissed it as "an immaculately rancid scrap-bag in which a hit single was stuffed into a pile of covers", standing "among the least-loved [number one] records of its era". In 2024, Rolling Stone ranked Tonight the fourth most disappointing album ever, calling it "turgid" and feeling "oddly rushed".
Nevertheless, many commentators have shown appreciation for Tonight, believing it to be overlooked. Ben Jardine of Under the Radar magazine contested that "Loving the Alien" foreshadowed the "vocal theatrics" and narrative science fiction elements of 2016's Blackstar, and it and other album tracks sound better decades after its original release. Jardine also said that Tonight, like Bowie's other 1980s records, were integral to his overall discography: "Everything in Bowie's illustrious career was built on what came before it." Pegg finds that despite its flaws, Tonight is a "more interesting and rewarding" record than its predecessor. He considers Bowie's reggae renditions of "Don't Look Down" and the title track "surprisingly successful", and the two Bowie-penned tracks as having strong songwriting, concluding that it was the first Bowie album that was "manifestly behind its time".
Reissues
In 1995, Virgin Records re-released the album on CD with three bonus tracks, all of them singles from soundtracks Bowie contributed to in the years immediately following the album's release. EMI re-released the album in 1999 (featuring 24-bit digitally remastered sound and no bonus tracks).
In 2018, Tonight was remastered for the Loving the Alien (1983–1988) box set released by Parlophone, with other discs in the set including remixes and B-sides from the album. The album was released in CD and vinyl formats, as part of this compilation and then separately the following year.
Track listing
Personnel
Adapted from the Tonight liner notes and the International Musician magazine.
- David Bowie – vocals
- Derek Bramble – guitar ; guitar synthesiser; bass guitar ; Yamaha DX7, Oberheim OB-8, Roland Jupiter-8 and PPG Wave 2.2 synthesizers; backing vocals
- Carlos Alomar – guitars
- Omar Hakim – drums
- Carmine Rojas – bass guitar
- Mark King – bass guitar
- Rob Yale – Fairlight CMI
- Guy St. Onge – marimba
- Sammy Figueroa – percussion
- Tina Turner – lead vocals
- Iggy Pop – backing vocals
- Robin Clark – backing vocals
- George Simms – backing vocals
- Curtis King – backing vocals
- Arif Mardin – string arrangements; synthesisers
- Mark Pender – flugel horn; trumpet
The Borneo Horns
- Stanley Harrison – alto saxophone; tenor saxophone
- Lenny Pickett – tenor saxophone; clarinet
- Steve Elson – baritone saxophone
Production
- David Bowie – producer
- Derek Bramble – producer
- Hugh Padgham – producer, engineer and mixer
Charts and certifications
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"
|+1984 weekly chart performance for Tonight
!scope="col"|Chart (1984)
!scope="col"|Peak<br />Position
|-
!scope="row"|Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)
|4
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Canadian Albums (RPM)
|4
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)
| 9
|-
!scope="row"|Italian Albums (Musica e dischi)
| 7
|-
!scope="row"|Japanese Albums (Oricon)
|3
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Spanish Albums (PROMUSICAE)
|3
|-
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|US Billboard Top 200 Albums
|11
|-
!scope="row"|West German Albums (GfK Entertainment)
|8
|}
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"
|+2019 weekly chart performance for Tonight
!Chart (2019)
!Peak<br />Position
|-
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"
|+1984 year-end chart performance for Tonight
!scope="col"|Chart (1984)
!scope="col"|Position
|-
!scope="row"|Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)
|29
|-
!scope="row"|UK Albums (OCC)
|44
|-
|}