David Bowie - Reality (2003)

This one came out during those forty or so years when I was looking the other way, and if we're to be honest, so were most of you lot. Excepting a few inconsequential squares in polo neck sweaters working for hospital radio, people with hearing jumped ship around the time of Let's Dance - to make an admittedly massive generalisation - because why the fuck wouldn't you? Some of us came to regret the decision, while others were too busy with everything else that has happened during the last four decades; and besides, we were tired of yet another true return to form sounding like more of the approximate same, and there's not much point getting upset about it. Anyway, I eventually saw the error of my ways and so I went back, overcome by curiosity, and it was all better than I remembered, even if the ironically titled Never Let Me Down remains difficult to love; but Reality is the one which had me kicking myself, because it might even be his greatest album - if such an accolade is even meaningful.

The drums pound just as they did on Heroes, and all that excess of instrumentation weaves away in the background, almost unnoticed until you can't shift the fucker from your internal jukebox; and yes, he churned out a couple of actual good 'uns prior to Reality, but this was the one where it sounded like he meant it, and it sounded like he was enjoying himself, and it sounded particularly like he'd stopped caring about what anyone else might think. This is the one, moreso than the final two, where I suddenly remembered how exciting it used to be to come home with a new Bowie album, which was back in the days when I still had school on Monday. The new Bowie album always did a whole shitload of stuff you hadn't expected - by which I don't mean cod reggae with Tina Turner on the chorus - and it was new and exciting and you'd feel connected to something you couldn't even describe.

I still don't know what the hell this album is about, beyond the obviously insubstantial quality of modern life, and yet it affects me deeply. She'll Drive the Big Car in particular tears my heart out every time and I'm not even sure why, except that it felt like Dave understood something profound but bigger than words and difficult to squash into a song, something good, and he was doing his best to share it around.

You know that writing about music is a waste of time, right?