10 Terrible Songs That ALMOST RUINED Great Albums
9. Kooks - David Bowie
For a man who reinvented rock music from the ground up more than a few times, David Bowie didn't really have the smoothest of transitions between albums. Although his debut Space Oddity marked the beginning of all things weird in the realm of art rock, it wasn't until Hunky Dory that Bowie first hit on his unique brand of ethereal pop and glam rock that would become emblematic just a few years later. However, some old habits tend to die hard.
Aside from the amazing cuts on the record like Changes and Life on Mars?, Kooks feels less necessary in the evolution of Bowie's sound. Written as an ode to his young son, most of this song makes for a cute idea rather than an actual piece of music to put on the record. Compared to the adventurous production on the rest of the record, this feels more like a relic from the vaudevillian leaning material apparent on Bowie's earlier albums.
While it's understandable that the Starman was still finding his feet, other songs on this same album like Quicksand prove that he's matured leaps and bounds from something like this. Even though Bowie had started to come into his own at this point, it's songs like these that show that he still had a lot of work to do before Ziggy Stardust was in peak form.