Hunky Dory (1971)
Hunky Dory is a 1971 art pop album by David Bowie.
A piano, a stack of unfinished songs, and no tour dates on the calendar. Bowie had stepped back from the road and the studio through 1971, and when he sat down to write again he worked at the keyboard instead of with a guitar in his hands. The change of instrument shows in the material: melody carries first, and the chord moves owe as much to show tunes as to rock records.
He then built a band around the songs. Mick Ronson played guitar, Trevor Bolder bass, Mick Woodmansey drums, and the sessions ran through the middle of 1971 at Trident Studios in London. Rick Wakeman added piano shortly before he left to join Yes. Ken Scott, who had engineered the two Bowie albums before this one, stepped up to co-produce with him.
RCA released it in the United Kingdom on 17 December 1971, the fourth Bowie studio album. The genre tags stack up for a reason: glam rock, art rock, folk rock, art pop, every one of them fair and none of them the full account. Come here for Bowie the songwriter rather than Bowie the character, with arrangements set around the piano and Ronson answering it.
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A few thoughts on Hunky Dory
Moonage Daydream is the closest companion piece, Bowie assembling and shedding personas in his own footage and his own voice, which lands well next to a record made just before the costume years. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars catches the stage version of that era, loud and lit and nothing like a studio take. David Bowie: The Last Five Years runs the other direction, following the same songwriter decades on from Trident. On the page, Bowie's Bookshelf walks through the novels and poetry he read, the nearest thing to a map of where his lyrics came from. Tony Visconti: The Autobiography covers the London studio world Ken Scott and Bowie worked in, written by a producer who spent decades in those rooms.