David Bowie “Tonight” released 35 years ago today, September 24th, 1984. (There are a few different dates given for this release, including September 1st and 29th but the website bowiebible.com cites the 24th and who am I to argue with a bible?) Tonight was Bowie’s 16th studio LP; it went to #1 in the UK and #11 in the US, mostly on the heels of success from Let’s Dance and his Serious Moonlight tour because Tonight is not one of his better albums. It has been much maligned over the years by critics and even Bowie himself admitted it was far from his best. He only wrote two new tracks for the LP: “Loving the Alien” and the single “Blue Jean” which hit #6 in the UK and #8 in the US. (I actually really love that song – fond ‘84 MTV memories and all that) The songs “Tumble and Twirl” and “Dancing With the Big Boys” were new Iggy Pop/Bowie collaborations. “Neighborhood Threat” was another Pop/Bowie (along with Ricky Gardiner) effort but it was originally recorded by Pop in 1977 for his Lust for Life LP and “Don’t Look Down” was a Pop cover (Iggy recorded it for his ‘79 New Values album). Also from Lust For Life on Tonight is Bowie’s version of the title track “Tonight,” a duet with Tina Turner. Bowie explained all of this to NME in September 1984 by saying, “I didn’t really [have] enough new things of my own because of the tour [Serious Moonlight]. I can’t write on tour, and there wasn’t really enough preparation afterwards to write anything that I felt was really worth putting down, and I didn’t want to put out things that ‘would do’ so there are two or three that I felt were good things to do and the other stuff…What I suppose I really wanted to do was to work with Iggy again, that’s something I’ve not done for a long time. And Iggy wanted us to do something together.” Bowie also covers the Beach Boys with “God Only Knows” (I really dislike that song and knowing it’s a Beach Boys cover doesn’t help) and the Lieber and Stoller song “I Keep Forgetting” originally released by Chuck Jackson. Overall Tonight is a fairly bland album: it has the big 80′s production polish but lacks the groove – supplied by Nile Rodgers on his previous smash LP Let’s Dance (Rodgers is quoted saying about Bowie’s decision to use producers Derek Bramble and Hugh Padgham rather than Rodgers that “Journalists would start asking David questions like ‘How much did Nile have to do with this?’ and this is very difficult for any artist, especially someone of David’s stature…It seemed to be a conscious effort to distance himself from me.”)