Young Americans is the ninth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 7March 1975 through RCA Records. A departure from the glam rock style of previous albums, the record showcased Bowie's interest in soul and R&B. Music critics have described the sound as blue-eyed soul; Bowie himself labelled the album's sound "plastic soul".
Recording sessions began at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia in August 1974, after the first leg of Bowie's Diamond Dogs Tour. The record was produced by Tony Visconti, and includes a variety of musicians, such as the guitarist Carlos Alomar, who became one of Bowie's most frequent collaborators, and the backing vocalists Ava Cherry, Robin Clark and then-unknown singer Luther Vandross. As the tour continued the setlist and design began to incorporate the influence of the new material. The recording sessions continued at the Record Plant in New York City at the tour's end. A collaboration between Bowie and John Lennon yielded a cover of Lennon's Beatles song "Across the Universe" and an original, "Fame", during a January 1975 session at Electric Lady Studios, produced by Harry Maslin. The album's cover artwork is a back-lit photograph of Bowie taken by Eric Stephen Jacobs.
Young Americans was Bowie's breakthrough in the US, reaching the top 10 on the Billboard chart; "Fame" became Bowie's first number one hit single. Bowie continued developing its sound on Station to Station (1976). Young Americans has received mixed critical reviews on release and in later decades; Bowie himself had mixed feelings about the album. However, the album proved influential, as Bowie was one of the first white artists of the era to overtly engage with newly emerging black musical styles; other British artists followed suit. The album has been reissued multiple times with outtakes, and was remastered in 2016 as part of the Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976) box set.
Background and development
left|thumb|upright=0.70|alt=Carlos Alomar performing in 1974|Young Americans was the beginning of Bowie's working relationship with the guitarist [[Carlos Alomar (pictured in 1974).]]
David Bowie released his eighth studio album Diamond Dogs in May 1974. His final album in the glam rock genre, it contained two songs, "Rock 'n' Roll with Me" and "1984", that exhibit elements of funk and soul, which predicted the musical direction for Bowie's next project. While his interest in soul music dated back to his mod days in the mid-1960s, he began listening to soul records extensively and incorporating soul material into his live sets. In July, towards the end of the first leg of his Diamond Dogs Tour, he performed covers of the soul songs "Knock on Wood" by Eddie Floyd and "Here Today and Gone Tomorrow" by the Ohio Players for shows in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania; these shows were recorded and released on the live album David Live in October 1974. Bowie had grown tired of the tour's lavish set-pieces and theatricality and was ready to fully embrace black soul music.
In early 1974, Bowie met the funk guitarist Carlos Alomar, an Apollo Theater session musician who had played with James Brown, Chuck Berry and Wilson Pickett. One of Bowie's favourite records was Brown's Live at the Apollo (1963), so meeting a musician who played at the Apollo meant a lot to him. Alomar had never heard of Bowie when they met, but they immediately connected and formed a working relationship that would last almost 15 years; Alomar became Bowie's guide into American black music.
While in Pennsylvania, Bowie visited Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia to work on recordings with the American musician Ava Cherry. Sigma Sound was the home of Philadelphia soul Before Philadelphia, Bowie had spent most of his recording career in Britain, where recording methods were different from those in the United States. At Olympic and Trident Studios in Britain, engineers applied equalisers and reverb as they were recording, so these effects were heard upon playback. At Sigma Sound, however, the engineers applied effects during the mixing stage. Bowie was initially confounded when hearing the tapes back, as according to the biographer Chris O'Leary, he "hadn't heard his 'naked' voice on tape in years".
thumb|left|upright=0.8|alt=A black and white photo of a man singing into a microphone|Bowie performing on the Soul Tour in late 1974.
The sessions were productive and moved rapidly, only taking two weeks to complete. It was agreed early on to record as much of the album as possible live, with the full band playing together, including Bowie's vocals, as a single continuous take for each song. According to Visconti, the album contains "about 85% 'live' David Bowie". Most of the material was built out of jam sessions.
Songs
Young Americans presented a new musical direction for Bowie, exploring blue-eyed soul According to BBC Music's Daryl Easlea, lyrical themes throughout the album include loneliness, despair and alienation, that represents Bowie and Lennon's dissatisfaction with the troubles of fame and stardom. Alomar originally developed the guitar riff for Bowie's cover of "Footstompin, which Bowie then used to create "Fame". Lennon's voice is heard interjecting the falsetto "Fame" throughout the song. Bowie later said that Lennon was the "energy" and the "inspiration" for "Fame", which is why he received a writing credit; O'Leary states that Lennon wrote the song's intro chord progression. In 1980, Lennon stated: "We took some Stevie Wonder middle eight and did it backwards, you know, and we made a record out of it!"
Outtakes
"Who Can I Be Now?" reflects the theme of self-identity. Over its runtime, it builds to a what Pegg calls a "gospel-choir climax". Doggett writes that its title summarises Bowie's career up to this point, sharing a similar theme as "Changes". "It's Gonna Be Me" is a ballad similar in style to Aretha Franklin. Originally titled "Come Back My Baby", it is lyrically similar to "Can You Hear Me?", in that it follows a casual seducer who realises the error of his ways and works to redeem himself. Pegg and Doggett praised the track as one of the most overlooked gems of Bowie's entire career. "John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)" is a radical seven-minute funk and disco reworking of Bowie's 1972 glam rock single "John, I'm Only Dancing". This new version mostly retains the original's chorus, but with new verses and an entirely different melody. It was released as a single in 1979. Sandford calls it one of the "classic" album covers.
Release
RCA released "Young Americans" as the lead single to the album on 21February 1975, with the Ziggy Stardust track "Suffragette City" (1972) as the B-side. In the US, it was released in edited form, omitting two verses and a chorus; its B-side was the 1974 live cover of "Knock on Wood". It reached number 18 on the UK Singles Chart and number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, his second top 40 entry and second-highest chart peak in the US up to that point. Bowie's November 1974 performance of the song on The Dick Cavett Show was used as promotion, airing on the BBC's Top of the Pops on 21February 1975.
thumb|upright=0.9|left|alt=A man with a woman holding a microphone|Bowie with [[Cher on her self-titled variety show in November 1975. He sang "Fame" and "Can You Hear Me?" on the show.]]
Young Americans was released in the UK on 7March 1975, and in early April in the US. It reached number nine on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and remained on the chart for 51 weeks; Elsewhere, Young Americans reached the top five in New Zealand and Sweden, Record World called it Bowie's "most compelling album to date"; Crawdaddy Michael Gross said it was his best studio record since Ziggy Stardust, while Cashbox praised Bowie as an artist. In their end-of-year list, NME ranked Young Americans the seventh best album of 1975.
Amongst mixed reviews, some enjoyed certain tracks but disregarded the collection as a whole. Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror described the sound as "spasmodic, awkward, frustrating" and having "a joyless energy". In The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jack Lloyd called Young Americans a "gem" and a "triumph" filled with "superb" songs aside from the "pretentious" title track, but felt "Across the Universe" and "Fame" were out of place.
Several critics were negative. In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau initially gave the record a C+ called the record "an almost total failure", saying that "although the amalgam of rock and Philly soul is so thin it's interesting, it overwhelms David's voice, which is even thinner". He nonetheless appreciated Bowie's renewed "generosity of spirit to risk failure" following the disappointments of Diamond Dogs and David Live. He later amended his review to B− and said of the album: "this is a failure." In Phonograph Record, John Mendelsohn criticised the lyrics, Bowie's vocal performance, found the melodies "as good as non-existent" and the overall album very weak. In the NME, Ian MacDonald felt the record was more of a transitional one, created out of a confused state of mind not knowing where to take his career next. He enjoyed it despite its flaws. In Melody Maker, Michael Watts praised the backing band but found the record too "pastiche" to be credible and Bowie's worst release up to that point. In Canada, Bill Man of The Gazette was also disappointed, believing Bowie should "focus his talents more directly".
Legacy
Subsequent events
Bowie continued developing the funk and soul of Young Americans, with electronic and German krautrock influences, for his next studio album, Station to Station. Produced by Harry Maslin, the album was recorded in Los Angeles from September to November 1975 and released in January 1976. Songs from the Young Americans period that foreshadowed the album's direction included "Win", "Can You Hear Me?" and "Who Can I Be Now?" Station to Station continued Bowie's run of commercial success, reaching number three in the US. However, his cocaine use continued throughout 1975, to the extent he had almost no recollection of recording Station to Station. After completing the Isolar Tour in May 1976, he moved to Europe to rid himself of his drug addiction.
Commentators have acknowledged Young Americans as Bowie's first album that he performed as himself rather than as a persona. He later reversed his stance in 1990, telling Q magazine: "I shouldn't have been quite so hard on myself, because looking back it was pretty good white, blue-eyed soul [and] it was quite definitely one of the best bands I ever had."
Influence
Young Americans has been called one of Bowie's most influential records. With the album, Bowie was one of the first mainstream white artists to embrace black musical styles, paving the way for other artists to engage in similar styles. Daryl Easlea summarised in Record Collector: "While all rock'n'roll was based on white men's appropriation of black popular music, very few artists had embraced the form wholesale, to the point of using the same studios and musicians, as Bowie [did]."
Retrospective reviews
In later decades, Young Americans has been dismissed as a purely transitional record being sequenced between Bowie's Ziggy and Thin White Duke periods. Others agree that Young Americans deserves a spot in Bowie's discography. Positive reviews of the album say that it has aged well, even being considered by some as a masterpiece of white soul. The singer Bob Geldof said: "Young Americans is a fantastic soul record, but soul with something else going on. There's an edginess to it."
Young Americans was voted Bowie's ninth best album in a 2013 readers' poll for Rolling Stone. The magazine argued that its style shift helped introduce Bowie to a wider audience. That same year, NME ranked the album at number 175 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2004, the critic Charles Shaar Murray voted it the 88th best British album in a list for The Observer. The album was also included in the 2018 edition of Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Reissues
Young Americans was first released on CD by RCA in 1984, and then by Rykodisc/EMI in 1991, with three bonus tracks. The reissue charted at number 54 on the UK Albums Chart for one week in April 1991. The 2007 reissue, marketed as a "Special Edition", included an accompanying DVD containing 5.1 surround sound mixes of the album and Bowie's November 1974 interview and performances on The Dick Cavett Show. In 2016, the album was remastered for the Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976) box set, which also includes an earlier, rawer-sounding draft of the album, titled The Gouster. It was released in CD, vinyl, and digital formats, both as part of this compilation and separately. On 7 March 2025, Young Americans will be reissued again as a half-speed mastered LP and a picture disc for its 50th anniversary.
The 1991 and 2007 reissues featured "Who Can I Be Now?", "John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)" and "It's Gonna Be Me" as bonus tracks; the latter was released in an alternate version with strings on the 2007 edition. The 1991 reissue replaced the original versions of "Win", "Fascination" and "Right" with alternate mixes, but later reissues restored the original mixes. Another outtake, "After Today", appeared on the 1989 box set Sound + Vision, as did the alternate mix of "Fascination".