![]() ![]() There is, however, an urgency to his writing and singing that defies the threat of deceleration in middle age - Iggy turns forty next year - as he confronts, with noble-savage cool, a tense future. ![]() #IGGY POP BLAH BLAH BLAH FULL#Appropriately, the album opens with a synthed-up version of a prophetic ’58 Buddy Holly romp called “Real Wild Child (Wild One).” Iggy has long outgrown the concrete-jungle-boy act of his manic days with the Stooges (“I’m a streetwalkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm,” from 1973’s “Search and Destroy”). Yet even at its most familiar, Blah-Blah-Blah is as spiritually outraged and emotionally direct as commercial pop gets these days. There is a nagging homogeneity to side one - too many moody circuit-board rockers in a row, with Iggy sliding into his vocals like an evil, oily Der Bingle. Indeed, Bowie relies too much on the conventional snap ‘n’ shine of current electro-dance music to frame his protégé’s roguish lyric wit. Hard-core hellions suckled on the cathartic roar of Fun House and Raw Power will undoubtedly dismiss Blah-Blah-Blah as Iggy’s big sellout. But Blah-Blah-Blah, which Bowie coproduced and largely co-wrote, could be the big payoff Bowie has finally given Iggy a Let’s Dance of his own. The Thin White Duke has dutifully repaid that debt over the years: he coaxed Iggy back from drugland in Berlin and produced his robust 77 comeback LPs, The Idiot and Lust for Life. The mad Michigan daddy of punk is widely believed to have inspired Bowie’s glitterrock creation Ziggy Stardust, and two of Bowie’s biggest hits were about (“The Jean Genie”) and by (an Iggy-Bowie collaboration, “China Girl”) the Pop. Both of these songs were minor hits, so Blah Blah Blah succeeded on its obviously commercial terms, but that doesn't change the fact it's one of Iggy's least interesting albums, and has dated worse than almost anything he's ever recorded.David Bowie owes a good deal of his gold and platinum to Iggy Pop. And in the four years since Zombie Birdhouse, Iggy hadn't come up with much in the way of material the only truly memorable tracks are "Real Wild Child (Wild One)," a neat bit of electro-processed rockabilly (previously a hit for Australian rocker Johnny O'Keefe), and the moody "Cry for Love," co-written by former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones. In the liner notes, a member of Duran Duran is thanked for the loan of a drum machine, and that speaks volumes about the production Blah Blah Blah is slick in a very '80s way, dominated by preprogrammed percussion and swirling keyboards. Like The Idiot, Blah Blah Blah was heavily influenced by Bowie's input however, while The Idiot was made by a man creating intelligent and ambitious art rock, Blah Blah Blah is the work of a popmeister looking for hits and not afraid to sound cheesy about it. David Bowie offered to help, and together they came up with Blah Blah Blah, the most calculatedly commercial album of Iggy's career. Wisely realizing he was running out of second chances, Iggy decided to make the most of his good fortune he steered clear of drugs, learned to cook his own meals, started putting money in the bank, and used his savings to bankroll a new album. ![]() Bowie recorded "China Girl," a song Bowie and Pop co-wrote, for his album Let's Dance, earning Iggy some large (and much-needed) royalty checks. In 1983, Iggy Pop's career was in shambles, but an unexpected windfall arrived thanks to Iggy's frequent benefactor David Bowie. ![]()
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