Album · David Bowie
Never Let Me Down by David Bowie
Never Let Me Down is an album by David Bowie, released in 1987. 4 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 12 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Time Will Crawl”, on 4 lists with a best position of #45.
Never Let Me Down, David Bowie's seventeenth album, came out on EMI America in April 1987, and it was meant as a reset. Stung by his disappointment with Tonight, Bowie co-produced it with David Richards, cut it in Switzerland and New York between September and November 1986 with Peter Frampton on guitar, and billed it as his return to rock and roll.
What came out is big, glossy and hard-charging, a mix of pop rock, art rock and harder stuff. "Day In, Day Out" and "Time Will Crawl" have real bite under the gleam, and the title track floats along more gently. It made the UK top 10 and all three singles reached the UK top 40, but critics and fans pounced on the overblown production, and so, in time, did Bowie. The Glass Spider Tour that followed was his most theatrical yet, and the backlash to both helped push him into forming Tin Machine. He later remixed "Time Will Crawl" for his iSelect retrospective in 2008.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Never Let Me Down on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Time Will Crawl | 4 | #45 | – | 1987–2003 | |
| 2 | Never Let Me Down | 4 | #43 | – | 1987–2002 | |
| 3 | Day In, Day out | 3 | #46 | – | 1987–2003 | |
| 4 | 87 and Cry | 1 | #88 | – | 1987 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.