The Man Who Sold The World (album) - Release and Aftermath

Release and Aftermath

The Man Who Sold the World was generally more successful commercially and critically in the US than in the UK on its original release in 1970–71. Music publications Melody Maker and NME found it "surprisingly excellent" and "rather hysterical", respectively. John Mendelsohn of Rolling Stone called the album "uniformly excellent" and commented that producer Tony Visconti's "use of echo, phasing, and other techniques on Bowie's voice serves to reinforce the jaggedness of Bowie's words and music", which he interpreted as "oblique and fragmented images that are almost impenetrable separately but which convey with effectiveness an ironic and bitter sense of the world when considered together". Sales were not high enough to dent the charts in either country at the time, however it made #26 in the UK and #105 in the US following its rerelease on 25 November 1972, in the wake of Bowie's commercial breakthrough The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

The album has been cited as influencing the goth rock, darkwave and science fiction elements of work by artists such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Gary Numan, John Foxx and Nine Inch Nails. In his journal, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana listed it at number 45 in his top 50 favourite albums. In 1993, the band re-recorded its title-track in their MTV Unplugged in New York. It has been claimed that glam rock began with the release of this album, though this is also attributed to Marc Bolan's appearance on the UK TV programme Top of the Pops in December 1970 wearing glitter, to perform what would be his first UK hit single under the name T. Rex, "Ride a White Swan", which peaked at Number 2 in the UK chart.

In a retrospective review, Allmusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine cited the album as "the beginning of David Bowie's classic period" and complimented its "tight, twisted heavy guitar rock that appears simple on the surface but sounds more gnarled upon each listen". Erlewine viewed its music and Bowie's "paranoid futuristic tales" as "bizarre", adding that "Musically, there isn't much innovation it is almost all hard blues-rock or psychedelic folk-rock — but there's an unsettling edge to the band's performance, which makes the record one of Bowie's best albums". In a 1999 review upon the album's reissue, Q gave it three out of five stars and called it "a robust, sexually charged affair". Mojo stated in a 2002 review, "A robust set that spins with dizzying disorientation Bowie's armoury was being hastily assembled, though it was never deployed with such thrilling abandon again".