Dog Man Star - Legacy

Legacy

With the exception of A New Morning, Dog Man Star is Suede's least commercially successful album, yet it is now widely considered their masterpiece. Many critics are keen to emphasise the band's split as the main reason for their slow downfall. John Mulvey was the first journalist to write about Suede for the NME in 1991 at the ULU, when Suede were still relatively unknown. Over a decade later and in sharp contrast to his emphatic review in 1991, Mulvey now of The Times wrote about Suede's final output, Singles. He felt that if the band "had split up in 1994, following the release of the majestic Dog Man Star album, Suede might now be celebrated as one of the great bands." He then added, "as the bulk of Singles proves, over the past nine years Suede have sounded like a parody of their formative selves."

Jon Monks of Stylus Magazine said that "Suede will never make a record this good again, whether it is because Butler left or merely it was a such a perfect time for Brett to be writing, they have failed to make anything nearly so encompassing as this." A significant review came from Nicholas Barber of The Independent, shortly after the release of their platinum-selling album Coming Up. Watching them perform live at Glasgow's Barrowlands with their new line-up, he questioned their forceful sound and reluctantly alluded Butler's absence. "When he left, he took with him the heart of the band, leaving behind the pelvis and the guts." He added, "Suede deliver the goods, all right. It's just that they no longer, as it were, deliver the greats."

In September 2003, Suede played five nights at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, dedicating each night to one of their five albums and playing through an entire album a night. Tickets sold fastest for Tuesday's Dog Man Star night, and were selling for over a £1,000 a pair on eBay, in contrast to A New Morning, which went for £100.

Following Suede's 2010 reunion shows, an article appeared in the New Classics column in American music magazine Crawdaddy!. Written by Andres Jauregui, he wrote about Dog Man Star's legacy: "Despite the challenges Suede faced, Anderson achieved the anti-Britpop album he wanted in Dog Man Star, to the kudos of the hipper critical circle, and the detriment of the band’s mainstream appeal. For all its indulgence and Bowie-esque melodrama, it’s more literate, more tortured, and more ambitious than its peers. More substantive than a “woo-hoo”, brighter than any champagne supernova, Dog Man Star’s origins, theatrics, and sense of rebellion are the stuff of rock'n'roll legend."