Never Let Me Down - Album Legacy

Album Legacy

Although at the time Bowie was quite pleased with the album, even going so far as to say "Do I still feel a commitment to music? I wouldn't even bother going into the studio if I didn't. It wouldn't be worth my while", his view on the album soured as the years passed. A few years later while working with Tin Machine on their second album, a "content" Bowie mused on his previous few albums:

You can tell I was terribly unhappy in the late '80s. ... I was in that netherworld of commercial acceptance. It was an awful trip. 1983, '84, '85, '86, '87 - those five years were simply dreadful. ... Never Let Me Down had good songs that I mistreated. I didn't really apply myself. I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to be doing. I wish there had been someone around who could have told me.

In 1993, while doing press tours for his album Black Tie White Noise, Bowie said that, while the album sold more than any of his previous albums, he "floundered creatively from 1984 to '88. I virtually lost my interest in music."

In 1995, Bowie spoke more at length about how he felt his creativity and music had suffered after Let's Dance:

meant absolutely nothing to me. It didn't make me feel good. I felt dissatisfied with everything I was doing, and eventually it started showing in my work. Let's Dance was an excellent album in a certain genre, but the next two albums after that showed that my lack of interest in my own work was really becoming transparent. My nadir was Never Let Me Down. It was such an awful album. I've gotten to a place now where I'm not very judgmental about myself. I put out what I do, whether it's in visual arts or in music, because I know that everything I do is really heartfelt. Even if it's a failure artistically, it doesn't bother me in the same way that Never Let Me Down bothers me. I really shouldn't have even bothered going into the studio to record it. In fact, when I play it, I wonder if I did sometimes.

In fact no song from this album has been performed on any of Bowie's tours after 1987. However, in later years Bowie's take on the album seems to have softened, with him going so far as to re-record the track "Time Will Crawl" in 2008 for his album of self-selected favorite songs, iSelect.