Young Americans by David Bowie

Young Americans, David Bowie's ninth album, came out on RCA on 7 March 1975, and it's the sound of the glam spaceman stepping out of the spotlight and into a Philadelphia soul studio. The sessions started at Sigma Sound in August 1974, after the first leg of the Diamond Dogs Tour, with Tony Visconti producing, and moved on to the Record Plant in New York once the tour wrapped. Bowie called what he made there "plastic soul". Critics called it blue-eyed soul. Either way, the glitter was gone.

The band around him made it swing: guitarist Carlos Alomar, who would become one of Bowie's most trusted collaborators, and backing singers Ava Cherry, Robin Clark and an unknown named Luther Vandross. The title track is a breathless rush of a song, all nerves and gospel fervor. Then came a January 1975 session at Electric Lady with John Lennon, produced by Harry Maslin, that yielded a cover of Lennon's "Across the Universe" and "Fame", a chopped-up, ice-cold funk strut that became Bowie's first number-one single in America.

The album cracked the US top 10 and gave Bowie his American breakthrough, even though reviews were mixed and Bowie himself was never sure what to make of it. Its reach went further than its reputation: few white artists of that moment had embraced the new black music of the day so openly, other British acts followed his lead, and he kept pushing the sound on Station to Station in 1976. Eric Stephen Jacobs shot the back-lit cover portrait.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.