10 Most Underrated David Bowie Albums

Under no circumstances was anyone telling Bowie what to do by the time '90s got going. Hell, in the previous decade, he had become a practical superstar and collaborated with everyone from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Tina Turner to Mick Jagger. In spite of the shaky quality amid those collaborations, Bowie was still willing to push himself that much more when it came time to record Outside.

Set as another conceptual affair, this is a narrative following the life of a protagonist as he uses murder as a sort of underground art project. Given the incredibly morbid subject matter, Bowie matches it in the intensity of these instrumentals, which seem to take a lot from the industrial boom that would get underway just a few years later with acts like Nine Inch Nails. With some of the most intentionally uncomfortable production in his career, itmakes total sense for the key song on here The Heart's Filthy Lesson to be used as one of the centerpieces for the film Seven a few years later.

At a time when most rock stars could easily coax off of nostalgia and make a mockery of their legacy, Outside shows Bowie still as the same experimental being he always was, unafraid to take risks wherever it suited him. While the story itself can be a bit messy from one track to the next, it's a journey than any Bowie aficionado should definitely take at least once.