Reading the reviews on this album, you'd think Bowie had chosen New Kids On The Block to collaborate with. Or Hitler! Not so. Most people here were expecting Low II or something. And that's not what this is. This is just really really good pop music. While it's not indicative of Bowie's work as a whole (no single album is), honestly it's not a bad jumping off point if your only exposure to him is as Jareth in Labyrinth. If you like that music, or 80's music in general, chances are you will like this.

Bowie has nothing to be ashamed of here. If the music is not your cup of tea, that's one thing. But to say that he was stealing money from fans by releasing a grand pop album is unfair and untrue.

Sometimes I think critics like to pile on and slam the latest album by an aging star without really listening to it. However, the critics were right about this one. Don't listen to all the Bowie-heads out there. This one blows.

I'd be hard pressed to find a record in my collection (over 600 cds) that is worse than this. There is not a single great or even good song on this album. The title track and "Time Will Crawl" are okay, and "Day In Day Out" is listenable. The rest of the album doesn't even meet that minimal standard. And ignore that other guy--"Too Dizzy" sucks, too.

If there is one thing this site proves, its that no matter how unquestionably bad a record is (and , yes, sometimes a record is so unquestionably bad that no allowances can be made for "matters of taste"), there are people out there who will like it.

For the Bowie completist only.

There's always something to like on every David Bowie-album, but on some it's pretty hard to find some redeeming qualities. 1987's "Never Let Me Down" is one of Bowie's weakest efforts; that's a thing mostly everyone will agree about. Bowie's creativity was supposed to turn on him during the eighties, but apart from this album, I absolutely don't agree. 1980's "Scary Monsters" is a masterpiece, 1983's "Let's Dance" was very good, very slick and very catchy, and 1984's "Tonight" isn't half as bad as everybody wants you to believe (I actually like it a lot). Plus that, some of his most beautiful singles were written in the eighties ("This Is Not America", "Absolute Beginners").

"Never Let Me Down" on the other hand, is a definite and clear lowpoint; it's like Bowie just didn't care so much anymore, and just wanted to make another album to satisfy the crowd, the record-company, and himself (money-wise). It's mostly exchangable eighties-pop/rock, with typically loud drums, color-by-numbers guitarsolo's and straightforward, uninspired songwriting. That doesn't mean that all of it is completely abysmal, "Day In Day Out", "Time Will Crawl" and "Beat Of Your Drum" are all very ok songs, but compared to other mid-eighties Bowie-achievements like "Blue Jean" and "Loving The Alien", they simply pale in comparison, although I really like "Beat Of Your Drum" very much for it's dramatic vocal-delivery and mysterious melody. It is a little ruined by a mediocre 80's chorus though.

There's only one song that *really* bad, which is "Glass Spider". Starting out as a pompous spoken-word thingy with a silly story about -indeed- glass spiders, it suddenly segues into a completely uninteresting and melodyless song. There's no excuse for it, and my advice is to skip the whole thing. The rest of "Never Let Me Down" is consistently mediocre, or pretty ok, but never special. It's an album that could have been done by any interchangable eighties-artist (Robert Palmer, Paul Young) and because it's Bowie it makes us look for some hidden qualities.

"Never Let Me Down" has, although they are spare, it's moments. They're scattered all over the record, and are sometimes nothing more than an interesting chord-progression or guitar-melody. And, if you cherish good memories towards the eighties, this one will be satisfying for you, if only for it's eighties 'feel'. The advice is to get this thing used, as it is interesting to hear the changes in Bowie's career, also if they weren't that succesful at times. Bowie wouldn't really make a decent album after this one until the mid-nineties, and started making very good to great ones since 2002's beautiful "Heathen" and 2003's colorful and inspired "Reality". Especially with that in mind, "Never Let Me Down" isn't a depressing listen, it's just an interesting one.

All you need to do is look at the cover, in which David looks like one of the Thompson Twins, to get an idea of what this album sounds like: Bowie imitating `80s Bowie imitators. This is, by far, the worst Bowie album aside from maybe David Bowie (1969), which at least didn't sell many copies. Even Tin Machine, which has been almost equally dissed, has a few potentially good songs. By regular `80s pop standards, this is a lackluster album; compared to his `70s albums, or even his first mainstream `80s album, Let's Dance, it's embarrassing. David himself has admitted in several interviews (including one David Buckley included in his Bowie biography) that he wasn't very connected with his music at the time, and it comes through.

You'd be better off buying almost ANYTHING else in his catalog!

Never Let Me Down is considered to be the worst David Bowie album; he even said as much in an interview with Charlie Rose. Well guess what? I'm going to elicit rage and calls of putting me in a Greek restaurant with a sign on me reading "I'm A Turk" in saying that I place it high on my list of his albums. Go on, do something!

Bowie must have taken a cue from Eurythmics and gone for a harder edged sound like they did with Revenge. Well, the effort's one of consistency and definitely different from his other 1980's albums.

"Day-In Day-Out" captures the gritty life of a woman living on the edge until she pulls a shotgun and makes "the world aware she's an angry gal." I've associated this song too much with the video but it hasn't spoiled my liking this song.

"Time Will Crawl" is a bouncy but nihilistic three verses with differing themes. Uncaring government space experiments, chemical poisoning in the rivers that affects the local populace, and somebody who is either a psychopath or the same government man from verse one who is carrying out an experiment involving poison gas. Shades of Bhopal, 1984? The warm, warm breeze that melts metal and steel could be a reference to Chernobyl. And that line on making one's fingers disappear, could that also mean making one unable to feel anything, as in being jaded or disillusioned?

"Beat Of Your Dream" highlights Bowie's low vocals and it even has a catchy chorus to match, with a punchy brass and guitar section. And with a cool Frampton solo included in the last minute of the song. Or is that Alomar?

The title track is another standout track with its synthesizer and harmonica. Bowie sings in a higher register here and that works here.

Catchy and rocking is the theme for "Zeroes," "New York's In Love" and "'87 And Cry." In all three, especially the engaging "Zeroes," in which Bowie's vocals are strong and the guitar sometimes sounds like a sitar. I only say this because the musicians credits do not list a sitar player.

The spoken word story of "Glass Spider" and its synth-string and drumming musical section is not a waste of five-and-a-half minutes. The imagery of the spider's layered web of skeletons is intriguing. Wonder if this spider's a relative of those Martian spiders back in the 1970's.

The only song I'm not too crazy about is "Shining Star," which features a vocal rap from Mickey Rourke.

The 1999 remaster omitted the song "Too Dizzy," which was the penultimate song on the original rendition. I don't miss it that much.

Bowie gets guitar help not only from Carlos Alomar but from Peter Frampton. Robin Clark of Simple Minds does background vocal chores like she did on 1984's Tonight.

Very much underrated and unjustly panned, even by the artiste himself.