DAVID BOWIE Released ‘SCARY MONSTERS (AND SUPER CREEPS) 45 Years Ago Today
Significant longplayers from the past
12 September 2025
Eternal icon DAVID BOWIE released his 14th longplayer
SCARY MONSTERS (AND SUPER CREEPS) today 45 years
ago, on 12 September 1980.
His first album following the Berlin Trilogy – Low, Heroes and Lodger) was Bowie’s attempt
at creating a more commercial record after the trilogy proved successful artistically but less so commercially. It was co-produced by Tony Visconti., It topped the charts in the UK, Australia, France, New Zealand and peaked at #12 in the US.
The cover artwork of the LP is a large-scale collage by the artist Edward Bell featuring Bowie in the Pierrot costume worn in the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ video clip, along with photographs taken by the photographer Brian Duffy, who was reportedly upset by the final artwork, as he felt the cartoon demeaned his photographs.
The album’s lead single, Ashes To Ashes revisited
the character of Major Tom from Space Oddity.
Stereogum: “Scary Monsters would eventually be hailed as a successful marriage between Bowie’s experimental impulses and his songwriting acumen. Its infectious art-rock situated it perfectly at the dawn of new wave — a genre obviously heavily indebted to Bowie — yet at the same time it seemed to carry the whole preceding decade with it.
It was a capstone, summary, and new beginning all at once, emerging from Bowie’s dizzying ‘70s run.”
STREAM
