Many a musican has started out cool then destroyed their reputation with shitty albums. From there, the easiest way to defend your legacy is to cut your losses and disappear, nothing is cooler than obscurity. A few take the hard road and manage to repair their reputation with a string of solid releases. David Bowie, however, is one of the rare few who has repaired their reputation by continuing to release shitty albums.David Bowies mid-ninties "return to form" began not with the album "Black Tie White Noise," which is awful, but with this lone decent song from the afore mentioned album. And that's apparently all it took. Next thing you know Eno was back on board and the Thin White Duke was cranking out his best work since his Berlin days. Except that he wasn't, but nobody seemed to notice.
Do I sound bitter? I guess I still hold a grudge from back in the day, when nobody warned me not to buy this album just because of one awesome song with a kick ass video. This was before iTunes, before Napster, before mp3s, before record stores even had those listening stations where you could hear a select few albums through a pair of broken headphones. If you liked the single and the album got good reviews you held you breath, crossed your fingers and forked over your hard earned cash. Which I did. And now I have one more regret to weigh down my life. But all that shouldn't take away from the song "Jump They Say", which really is terrific. This one song showed the old man still had it, even if he didn't always choose to use it, and maybe, back then, that was actually something to get a little excited about.
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