The Idiot

Didn’t think I’d like this. I like it a lot. Thank you Iggy. I miss you. My mom told me you were the one. I wish I knew at that moment just how right she was. I shouldn’t have ever doubted you iggy.

Between the relatable title and the goofy pose he's doing I gotta admit I am digging the aesthetic here

An impressive story about the making of the album. When it came out, I was still a little too young and sheltered to even notice it. David Bowie didn’t really come into my consciousness until I saw the movie *Christiane F.*. I knew a few songs by Iggy Pop, but I didn’t connect them to him. It took many years before I truly learned to appreciate Iggy. And so I really like this album of his, too. There are a few tracks on it that I can listen to over and over again, and they’re contenders for my favorites list. 4/5

The remarkable thing about The Idiot isn’t simply how little it sounds like the Iggy Pop of the Stooges. It’s how thoroughly it reconsiders what a rock record can do. Riffs hammer away with minimal harmonic development, sounds shift and deteriorate, and instrumental passages continue long after the singer has finished his business. The arrangements acquire lives of their own, sometimes becoming almost independent compositions. It’s music built around insistent repetition, yet there’s nothing particularly static about it. And this was recorded in the summer of 1976. Good Lord. That date carries considerable weight for me. I was twelve, already fascinated by Bowie and craving more of the extraordinary musical world he’d opened up with Station to Station. Meanwhile, British television seemed determined to offer me a succession of exhausted glam leftovers, variety-show cabaret and cheerful commercial pap. I remember the likes of Brotherhood of Man’s “Save Your Kisses for Me” as part of the musical landscape against which I was searching for something more interesting. There was plenty of wonderful music being made in 1976, of course, but the gulf between what I wanted and what frequently appeared on Top of the Pops could seem enormous. And all that time, Bowie was in France with Iggy Pop, making precisely the sort of music I wanted to hear. I simply didn’t know it existed. The circumstances of its creation are particularly interesting because the familiar story of Bowie rescuing Iggy strikes me as only half the explanation. Both men were emerging from periods of considerable personal instability. Iggy needed a way forward after the collapse of the Stooges. Bowie had survived the cocaine-fuelled Station to Station period and was struggling with the demands of being David Bowie. What emerges is a relationship of mutual creative dependence. Bowie provides industry connections, studio resources and considerable musical imagination. Iggy gives Bowie a creative purpose that doesn’t require him to sustain the entire apparatus of his own solo career. Neither is simply rescuing the other. They become each other’s business and creative anchors. And the business aspect matters. In 1976, sophisticated experimentation with recording technology required access to expensive studios, engineers, musicians and somebody prepared to pay for it. You couldn’t simply take a laptop somewhere and spend a few days manipulating sounds until something interesting emerged. The opportunity to make a record was also the opportunity to discover what that record might become. The collaboration supplied both the artistic freedom and the material conditions necessary for experimentation. And what they discovered together was astonishing. “Sister Midnight” immediately establishes an unfamiliar musical world. Iggy’s extraordinarily grainy, low-register voice is complemented by Bowie’s strange, high backing vocals. I love the sound of those two registers interacting, one almost subterranean and the other hovering somewhere above it. Yet underneath, the riff simply hammers away. There’s remarkably little sense of harmonic development. The accompaniment refuses to budge, and the voices supply the movement. That becomes one of the central musical ideas of the album. Development doesn’t necessarily mean changing chords or moving towards a conventional resolution. It can happen through timbre, density, instrumental relationships and the way apparently repetitive structures change their character over time. “Nightclubbing” develops that vocabulary in an entirely different direction. It has an extraordinary narcotic drag. The rhythm machine lurches along, the piano staggers drunkenly, and Iggy delivers his lines with the exhausted detachment of somebody who’s forgotten why he went out in the first place. It’s almost dance music rendered physically incapable of dancing. My immediate association was Sheffield. Never mind Berlin, this sounds as though it could have emerged from somewhere around the city’s steelworks, with their mechanical rhythms and the peculiar, shabby industrial atmosphere that would subsequently find expression in Sheffield’s electronic music. It’s the sort of sound I associate with early Human League and Cabaret Voltaire, although the chronology runs in the opposite direction. But there’s another musical world inhabiting it. Kurt Weill. The thing sounds like Weimar cabaret performed with synthesizers and a drum machine. That slightly disreputable theatricality, the sour piano, the sense of urban nightlife as something sordid rather than glamorous. It’s Weill’s cabaret orchestra reimagined as an apparatus which understands the mechanics of performance but possesses none of its humanity. “Funtime” seems almost like a prequel to “Nightclubbing”. Where the latter depicts the exhausted aftermath, “Funtime” presents the rituals through which people pursue pleasure in the first place. The business of going out, flirting, performing attraction and supposedly enjoying oneself becomes strangely mechanical. Iggy sounds almost robotic, as though describing activities whose purpose he no longer quite understands. It’s the sort of social ritual I’ve never been particularly interested in myself, and there’s something delicious about hearing it rendered as a faintly absurd sequence of repetitive behaviours. The song doesn’t so much celebrate pleasure as expose the machinery through which people are expected to pursue it. But the album isn’t simply a succession of emotionally alienated characters inhabiting mechanical environments. “Baby” introduces a curious tenderness. The arrangement has another suggestion of shabby cabaret, but the lyric seems to concern a relationship approaching its end. There’s a recognition of past mistakes, of grief already experienced, and a desire to prevent somebody else from making the same errors. The singer appears capable of acknowledging his own responsibility without turning the performance into a conventional display of vulnerability. It’s almost dispassionate, yet the underlying sentiment is surprisingly generous. Iggy can sound tender without sounding especially fragile. That tension between the emotional substance and the theatrical restraint makes the song much more interesting than a straightforward romantic lament. And then there’s “China Girl”. I’ve known Bowie’s 1983 version for decades, but I think I prefer this original. Bowie performs the song beautifully, with an elegance and control that make its obsession almost seductive. Iggy sounds as though he’s being consumed by it. Jimmy Osterberg, rather than the outrageous Iggy Pop persona, seems to be breaking through the recording. There’s something almost painfully immediate about the lust, longing and frustration. He sounds driven half-mad by his feelings, increasingly unable to contain them within the musical performance. The moment when Jimmy is told to shut his mouth is particularly affecting. That growled recollection, followed by the extended shushing, seems to recreate the precise instant when his romantic fantasy encounters somebody else’s refusal to participate in it. And the use of his actual name matters. It’s not simply a generalised romantic predicament. It sounds uncomfortably specific, almost like an overheard intimate humiliation. The desperation in the vocal moves beyond performance into something that feels genuinely exposed. What’s striking is that the mechanical and emotionally distancing qualities established elsewhere on the record haven’t prevented this kind of intensely human moment. Indeed, the contrast makes it more powerful. “Dum Dum Boys” takes us back to the Stooges, remembered with affection and humour rather than retrospectively elevated into rock mythology. I was amused by the difference between this and David Crosby’s “Cowboy Movie”, which turns the collapse of CSNY into an elaborate frontier allegory. Iggy seems much happier simply remembering a collection of mates making a racket and hoping something might come of it. The Stooges were, after all, a noise machine for onstage chaos. Their insistent repetition and sheer physical aggression provided the environment in which Iggy could become an outrageous performer. The music and the stage behaviour were practically inseparable. Now that relationship between repetition and performance is being reconsidered. In “Dum Dum Boys”, the instrumental backing becomes increasingly interesting independently of the singer. The riff remains insistent, but the textures shift around it, accumulating and changing character without necessarily advancing the conventional musical argument. This brought to mind David Byrne’s observation that singing is a trick to keep people listening to music longer than they ordinarily would. What happens when you take the singing away? Can the repetitive structure, the changing textures and the relationships between instrumental sounds sustain the listener’s interest without a voice to provide narrative and personality? The more I listened, the more I noticed how frequently these songs devote considerable time to extended instrumental passages. The vocal argument concludes, but the music carries on. Sometimes it’s an extended coda; elsewhere, an outro that simply allows the established instrumental material to continue occupying the space. But these passages don’t feel like padding. They seem to be investigating the possibility that the arrangement itself has become the composition. There’s an important distinction between harmonic development and sonic development. A piece of music can remain harmonically almost stationary while undergoing substantial transformations in timbre, texture and density. “Dum Dum Boys” is particularly interesting because its insistence doesn’t prevent change. Rather, the fixed musical structure makes the changes occurring within it more noticeable. “Tiny Girls” initially appears to belong to an entirely different musical tradition. Its shuffle rhythm and peculiar saxophone immediately reminded me of Bowie’s “Drive-In Saturday”, particularly that nostalgic, reconstructed doo-wop atmosphere. But there’s something wonderfully odd about the saxophone. It’s thin, wheezy and almost embarrassed by its own romantic intentions. And then there’s the narrator. The song appears to concern a man who wants women without the inconvenient characteristics that make them human. He wants uncomplicated romantic figures, dolls or cardboard cutouts who will conform to his expectations without developing desires, histories or personalities of their own. When these supposedly innocent creatures reveal themselves to be actual people, he seems distinctly aggrieved. But the performance is knowing. That’s what makes it interesting. The narrator understands perfectly well how ridiculous his expectations are. His final, reproachful question seems directed as much towards himself as anybody else. He knows what he was asking for was absurd; he simply can’t resist complaining that reality has failed to accommodate him. The whole thing becomes a rather sophisticated piece of musical comedy. The exhausted saxophone is almost a musical equivalent of Iggy’s knowingly tired persona, a pathetic little serenade to a romantic fantasy that was never remotely sustainable. And once again, the song devotes an unusually large proportion of its duration to an instrumental outro. Iggy finishes complaining, but that peculiar romantic music continues regardless. The convention survives the collapse of the sentiment it was supposed to express. Then comes “Mass Production”. What an extraordinary conclusion. Eight minutes of oppressive industrial machinery, detuned synthesizers, relentless repetition and some of the most spectacularly alienated romantic sentiments imaginable. The opening lyrical proposition is astonishingly sleazy. The narrator asks his departing lover to provide him with the number of another woman almost like her. It’s as though the relationship hasn’t even finished before he’s placing an order for a replacement. Immediately, it seems like a grotesque continuation of “Tiny Girls”. There, the narrator wants women manufactured to his romantic specifications. Here, he practically expects them to be available as interchangeable products. But the instability extends beyond the woman. The narrator also begins to describe himself in terms of resemblance to somebody else. Identity becomes negotiable. Everybody is an approximation of another person, perhaps with a few minor adjustments to suit the requirements of the next relationship. That word “almost” becomes particularly unsettling. Nobody is quite themselves. Everyone is replaceable by a sufficiently close reproduction. And the music makes the whole proposition almost physically oppressive. It immediately brought J. G. Ballard to mind, particularly Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition. That peculiar relationship between sexuality, machinery, unstable identity and outrageous emotional detachment. Ballard’s characters frequently behave as though the most grotesque circumstances are perfectly ordinary. Their alienation isn’t simply a response to their environment; it seems to have become the organising principle of their behaviour. The same is true here. The industrial sounds aren’t merely a backdrop to the dehumanisation. The logic of the machinery seems to have entered the relationships themselves. The detuned synthesizers are extraordinary. There’s a chemical disorientation to them, as though the machinery continues functioning but the person experiencing it has lost any reliable sense of where they are. It evokes the narcotic drag of “Nightclubbing”, but in a considerably more oppressive environment. Given the circumstances surrounding Bowie and Iggy, it’s tempting to hear something of their recent experiences with drugs in that wavering, exhausted sound. Not as a literal musical depiction of intoxication or withdrawal, but as an atmosphere in which human perception has become unstable while the machinery remains indifferent. And the repetition is merciless. Unlike the aggressive repetition of the Stooges, which could provide the conditions for physical liberation through performance, this feels coercive. It offers no release. It simply continues. Then, eventually, the track doesn’t so much stop as run down like an exhausted machine. It’s a magnificent ending, and a profoundly unpleasant one. The oppressive environment seems finally to have consumed its own energy. There’s no satisfying resolution, no triumphant concluding gesture. The mechanism has simply reached the point where it can no longer sustain itself. Which brings me to the relationship between this record and Bowie’s Low. The chronology is important. The Idiot was recorded during the summer of 1976, before Low, although the release order was reversed. Hearing the albums in the context of their actual creation makes the connection particularly illuminating. Across The Idiot, Bowie and Iggy are exploring repetition, harmonic stasis, treated instruments, extended instrumental structures and the possibility that sound itself can become the principal subject of a composition. The musical environment is increasingly independent of the singer. I can hear the intellectual process that leads towards the extraordinary second side of Low. Not simply a collection of sounds that would subsequently reappear, but an emerging understanding of how music could be organised differently. Of course, Low isn’t merely The Idiot with the vocals removed. Its instrumental compositions, and Brian Eno’s important contribution to their development, involve different approaches to atmosphere, structure and duration. But the concentrated period in which Bowie moves from this collaboration into Low is extraordinarily fertile, and the experiments are audibly related. Yet it would be a mistake to treat The Idiot as an unfinished Low, or simply a preliminary exercise in the development of Bowie’s subsequent music. The experiments here already constitute an artistic statement, and Iggy’s voice is essential to it. The humanity, grotesque humour, tenderness, desperation and self-awareness that he brings to these mechanical arrangements cannot simply be removed without fundamentally changing their meaning. Indeed, the relationship between the mechanical and the human may be the album’s most compelling quality. The arrangements can be rigid, repetitive and emotionally alienated, yet Iggy moves through them with extraordinary variety. He can sound like a robot carrying out prescribed social functions, an exhausted cabaret performer, a man reflecting tenderly on romantic failure, or somebody practically disintegrating under the pressure of desire. Sometimes he seems to observe the absurdities of human behaviour from a considerable distance. Elsewhere, he’s thoroughly implicated in them. The machinery doesn’t eliminate humanity. It exposes it, frequently in uncomfortable ways. I also found myself comparing this with Bowie’s earlier collaboration with Lou Reed on Transformer. I suspect this is the more interesting record to me, although I appreciate that’s a contentious judgement. Transformer has a theatrical clarity and conventional musical coherence that make even its strangest characters and situations readily accessible. Bowie helps present Reed’s songwriting with wonderful precision. The Idiot is a considerably less accommodating proposition. It growls, distorts, repeats and occasionally threatens to fall apart. But that apparent unruliness conceals remarkably disciplined musical structures. The songs can be strange and unstable while their underlying mechanisms remain almost brutally consistent. If Transformer makes the strange accessible, The Idiot makes the familiar strange. Another comparison that helped clarify my response was The Verve’s A Northern Soul. Both records can appear to extend their musical ideas beyond conventional song structures, but they do so for very different purposes. The Verve’s narcotic expansiveness tends to envelop the listener. Its instrumental textures swell and accumulate until the music becomes an immersive emotional environment. The Idiot doesn’t work quite like that. I initially described some of its instrumental passages as rambling, but by the end I realised that wasn’t really accurate. It’s insistent repetition. The musical figures aren’t wandering. They’re staying precisely where they are while the sounds surrounding them change. The effect is sometimes hypnotic, but frequently claustrophobic. Rather than dissolving into the music, I become increasingly conscious of its component parts and the way they’re interacting. That difference matters. The record’s extended passages aren’t necessarily evidence of a lack of discipline or an inability to finish a song. Often, they’re where the most interesting musical investigation is happening. And the extraordinary thing is how assured the whole enterprise sounds. For all the evident experimentation, this doesn’t feel like a collection of tentative demonstrations. There’s considerable confidence in the decision to let a riff hammer away, to allow a strange noise to occupy the foreground, or to continue an instrumental passage well beyond the point at which the singer has departed. It’s exploratory music made by people who seem increasingly comfortable with the possibilities they’re discovering. And perhaps that’s where the circumstances of the collaboration become most significant. Bowie and Iggy aren’t simply two established artists combining their talents. They’re two musicians whose personal and creative lives have become unstable, finding a way forward through a partnership that allows each to operate differently. Their mutual dependence becomes creatively liberating. The practical circumstances make the experimentation possible, while the experimentation gives the partnership its artistic purpose. I don’t particularly want to measure this record by the subsequent musicians it influenced, or construct a retrospective history of post-punk and industrial music around it. Those connections may be interesting, but they risk turning the actual record into evidence for somebody else’s achievements. What matters is what these two men made together in 1976. And what an astonishing thing it is. Strange, sleazy, funny, intelligent, oppressive, occasionally tender and sometimes genuinely moving. A record of extraordinary sonic invention, with Iggy’s performances providing an essential, unsettling human presence inside increasingly mechanical musical environments. It sounds remarkably adventurous for its time, but its achievement isn’t simply that it was ahead of anything. It’s that the experiments produce music worth hearing entirely on its own terms. And I keep returning to that image of my twelve-year-old self in 1976, craving more of the strange musical world Bowie had begun revealing to me, while the television offered yet another cheerful helping of chicken-in-a-basket entertainment. Somewhere in France, Bowie and Iggy were making this. Nearly fifty years later, discovering just how extraordinary it is feels like finally hearing some of the music I was waiting for. I absolutely loved it.

i liked it but not enough to add any songs to my library i just don’t think it’s my thing, maybe too old for me?

3,1 Highlights: Funtime, Chinagirl

4/10 - Boring Iggy Pop sound

8.3/10

Another fun album! Short and catchy. Favourite track: Nightclubbing

one of the best non-stooges iggy albums. loved this one, him and bowie snapped here

Bring back the Stooges.

Its crazy how similar he sounds to Julian Casablancas. I didn't find this stellar or life changing, but also it was pretty good ... Until tiny girls and mass production which were just bad. Rounded down to 2

<Meme> Kids: Mom, I want David Bowie! Mom: We have David Bowie at home. The David Bowie at home… </meme> But seriously, this was just meh until China Girla d then I kind of turned on it. 2.5 stars rounding down.

Dirge and overall impression is one of boredom. China Girl is ok though. Iggy only let's loose a couple of times and for me to hold back that much when you're Iggy Pop, well it's kinda disappointing.

I thought this was good but I just thought it was a bit of a rip off Bowie. I was expecting a much more rockier sound because of his persona but this actually made me realise I’ve never heard a iggy pop song, only seen him on a Glastonbury stage or as a guest on some late night talk show topless and throwing a mic around. So it was nice to actually listen to him.

Strange to hear so many songs on a pop record in 3/4 time, but I quite enjoyed it for that. Loads of interesting ideas here. More subtle than I think of Iggy Pop for.

Felt interminable

A solid album

Good I liked it, plain and simple Highlights China girl (fav) Mass production

gonna be honest the whole time I was listening to this I was thinking about how much I would rather be listening to Stranger in the Alps with the weather and such. The album was good nothing I think I would listen to normally but I enjoyed the sound and what it was doing.

I'm not one much for Iggy Pop here, really. A solid, simple album that's at its best when it's self-indulgent (but not *too* self-indulgent*). Really straightforward punkish listening. Fav tracks: China Girl, Tiny Girls

I liked this, but it wasn’t phenomenal. I had high expectations for this.

It was fine. I typically really enjoy Iggy Pop but I found myself unimpressed by this album.

Apparently I listened to this twice but don't remember much about it at all...

Not my thing, 2.4

Album #179: The Idiot - Iggy Pop Genre (W): Art rock, punk rock, proto-punk Singles: Sister Midnight, China Girl I have not listened to this album before. Thoughts?: I love David Bowie’s production and the way he influenced the direction of this album. I also enjoy the songwriting and Iggy Pop’s particular vocal performance. A solid production! Favorite tracks: All of it!!

Classic punk album

Shocked at how much I enjoyed this one!

This guy's a pedophile

Simple, solid and enjoyable album. The Bowie fingerprints are all over it - to the extent that I did find myself thinking I'd rather just be listening to Bowie! Interesting listening to his version of China Girl. 6/10

Ehhhh 🤷🏼‍♂️

This is a cracking album, albeit one with a substantial David Bowie contributions. This together with Lust For Life helped get Iggy's life and career back on track, and both are excellent and indispensable albums.

Старый говнарь

A Bowie Pop from the 70s when Bowie was at what I think he's peak with Low a close follow up. You know it's gonna be good but my god what a sound. I've also loved Pops attitude delivery and vocals on older albums but not him sound. This is industrial, German, sweaty, seedy and wonderful in everyway

Not bad, Nightclubbing is the one.

I started off not really liking this at all, but the more I listened the more it grew on me. not every song is great, but overall the effect was engaging, if somewhat unnerving. 4/5.

Right from the start, Iggy's voice is disturbing, and deeply crazed in a way I love. "Sister Midnight" is one of the greatest post-punk openers I've ever heard. I'm in love immediately. And the cover! Iggy is standing strangely out in the snow, with a demand gaze. It's hard to tell what he's doing, but he seems to be dancing, but strangely; oddly. It is from this strangeness, this oddness, that the album steps out from. The cold drums, the noisy guitars, Iggy's monotone yet crazed voice, it all works together to build such a wonderful vibe. Then the album settles into it a bit, with songs like "Funtime" and "Baby" perhaps signifying some sort of autopilot for the album's sound, one that I don't particularly love, but that I still like, because I love this album. And then... "China Girl" comes on and changes everything. Passionate! Beautiful! Romantic! Phenomenal! The sequencing is perfect, it brings so much color into the album. The closer to the A-side, a driving, beautiful, and while the lyrical content doesn't always completely back it up, it feels hopeful in a way no other song does. "Dum Dum Boys" brings you right back, and what an inspired song. Krauty, noisy, screamy, loud! I love it so much. It impresses me to no end. "Tiny Girls," placed right in between the album's two really long awesome tracks, is also insane; David Bowie plays a MEAN fucking saxophone on the song that, when combined with the noisy guitars mixed faintly in the background, makes the song so much better and so interesting, and I fucking love it. Finally you get to "Mass Production," which is just a Goliath of a song, and I adore it. Ominous vocals, deep, distorted guitars, the climax... It's so good. I truly believe that, outside of the little slog at the beginning, this album is near-perfect, and incredible in so many ways. Well done, Iggy. 9.3/10 DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES REASON: QUALITY AND INFLUENCE

I think I don't quite mesh with Iggy, Nightclubbing is amazing and I love these Bowie esq songs but it makes me kinda just want to listen to Bowie 3.5

Meh

Still not a fan, but this is the "best" of the Iggy Pop albums I've had to hear so far. I'll give it an extra half-star because I didn't know that "China Girl" was originally an Iggy Pop song from this album.

I love Iggy and I like Bowie, but this album just isn't that good.

i really liked this! very bowie but there's a grungy industrial undertone to the whole thing which i'm really into

This album gets better with every listen. Super dark and cold, but so very cool

Pretty cool, even though some nonsensical stuff on it

some interesting sounds, but not enough to make the framework they're in not boring, and the singing doesn't exactly inspire confidence. it works its way around to almost not boring by the end but the damage is done

This srsly is the worst kind of punk, the one by self-infatuated pedophile junkies who consider themselves artists.

I thought I liked Iggy Pop ... but only the three-chord version and not this middle-of-the-road "zeitgeisty" pseudo-experimental drivel.

Iggy Pop is one of rock and roll’s greatest survivors. After the Stooges broke up in 1974, he had a moment of clarity and realised that the drug culture of LA and his heroin addiction in particular was going to kill him, so he moved to France with his pal David Bowie (who was at a similar low point in his life) and they recorded an album together. The Idiot feels like a reset for both of them, as they kicked their respective drug habits, and experimented with new sounds, bouncing ideas off each other in the studio before handing the tapes over to producer Tony Visconti who made sense of them and pulled the album together. There’s a notable shift from the proto-punk of Raw Power, with synths, saxophones and moody lyrics, but contrary to some opinions this is very much an Iggy album and informed his subsequent work. Idiot-tastic!

Quite enjoyed it! but not sure if I would listen again

love me some weird lil guy music, especially what is clearly heavily influenced by Bowie

This could be considered Bowie's album as much as it is Iggy Pop's album. Both influenced each other greatly during the production of their respective albums at the time ("Low" for Bowie). It's probably a departure of styles if you're used to Iggy Pop's previous work with the Stooges, as we primarily get a more electronic sound on top of the punk. It's admittedly an uneven listen, which tracks considering my distaste for David Bowie's "Low". I found this a little more listenable at least.

3.77

Cool album. Industrial sound in 1977, plus never knew Iggy Pop did China Girl first(tho David Bowie was in the studio helping out). Cool

I wish I liked this more than I did. It was honestly just meh. 2/5 ⭐️ 272/1098

Soft-ish pop

C'est marrant j'aimais pas DU TOUT le début et à partir de "Baby" j'ai un peu apprécié et j'ai ADORÉ "China Girl". Tout ce qui a suivi était un minimum bon.

Bah mid hein

7/10 Grungy and darker than the superior (albeit also 4 star) Lust for Life. A flaw in rating by only 5 stars, I guess

This is a grower! I remember disliking this on my first listen, but now I can appreciate this as a masterpiece! Despite being unpopular choices, I wasn't too fond of 'Sister Midnight' or 'Nightclubbing', but 'Baby' really piqued my interest! Then there's 'China Girl'! This is leagues better than Bowie's version; I think that the version here is much darker and the lead guitar feels a lot more passionate and unique, but 'Let's Dance' as a whole album never appealed to me and Iggy really puts some personality into it! Then there's the 3 final tracks, all of which are near-perfect! 'Dum Dum Boys' was great, 'Tiny Girls' was a bit of a step backwards, but the closer - 'Mass Production' - is one of the greatest tracks I've heard in a while, it was engaging and even leant into Industrial or Noise Rock at certain points - if you know me, you know I LOVE a bit of that! I'd also like to mention that I've never listened to this album the same after hearing the tragic story of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, this was the very last album he heard before committing suicide, in fact, the needle was still spinning on the record when he was found. Devastating of course, but you can definitely hear the influence that this album had on Joy Division's work, particularly on Closer.

I like it, but dated

Not a huge fan, it felt like knockoff David Bowie even Brierley he covered a David Bowie song

I liked dum dum boys, tiny girls a little bit anddddd that's it 2/5

I'm not very familiar with Iggy Pop's work outside of some of his bigger hits, so I didn't know anything on this album (outside of "China Girl", which I had no idea was recorded by Iggy first and Bowie later). You can definitely hear the influence of Bowie all over this record. Pretty amazing what can happen when Iggy Pop and David Bowie decide the only way they can both stay clean is to move to Europe and start making music together. This is a lot different than the Iggy - and Stooges - stuff that I am more familiar with, and I really like some of it. A couple of "misses" on the album for me, but overall very solid.

It's really hard to enjoy these songs when: 1) they can be a bit inscrutable musically 2) they seem to keep referring to the musician's real life predation of young girls.

Loved this one. Always been a fan of "Nightclubbing," but "Mass Production" was new to me and goes hard. I love it.

Pretty good

Korv, öl och kokain i Berlin.

Hmmmmm oh I don't know. I haven't felt this torn betwen 3 and 4 stars in a while. I think I'll go with 3 ultimately because I'm just not sure I feel compelled to spend any more time with this one but also I can definitely see myself getting more into it if I DID spend the time... well regardless I'm not in the mood for any more of it now. Maybe later I'll give it another go

Mid

With yesterday being rumours, almost anything that follows will be lackluster. Certainly didn't lend any favors, but even without that context, this wasn't very impressive. Just okay, didn't ruin my day, also didn't inspire me to listen more.

This was the first time I had ever listened to Iggy Pop. This album has a really cool, unique and dark sound. The album length is great and I had no idea that he wrote China Girl. An enjoyable listen.

Solid, I enjoyed it. Towards the end, my liking may have slightly decreased, but not below 4/5. Special praise to Nightclubbing.

I thought I liked Iggy Pop

Amerikan Kauko Röyhkä.

3.5

last song is jarring

8.5 / 10

amazing album

3/5

Iggy Pop is the quintessential Grandaddy of Rock and Roll. This album is entirely likeable. He's not David Bowie but close. Therefore my 3.5 is promoted to a 4.

Day985 - iggy and david bowie make a fantastic team

I’ve never listened to an Iggy Pop album before. But this is basically an incredible Bowie album with less good vocals. So like, it’s pretty good?

China Girl Dum Dum Boys

Sister Midnight Nightclubbing Mass Production

real idiotic

The album that spawned from the idea of Mr. Drug going to Drug City to get off drugs. And it worked for both Pop and Bowie. Reading the wikipedia, it seems to be an instrumental Bowie album with Iggy pop writing and singing, works pretty well for the most part. The songs have this interesting desolate feel to them. Some duller tracks keep this from a 5 but when they hit they really hit

I really like Iggy, and while I dig the innate Iggy-ness here I didn't love it. Maybe the production hasn't aged particularly well? Still a solid 3 Iggies

Cool

Knowing that this was produced by Bowie puts a pretty strong style tweak on the record, but Nightclubbing wouldn't have been as good of a song without that influence. Overall the album was pretty good and a great debut for Iggy Pop. Brb I'm gonna go listen to Bowie's album Low that was made around the same time.

3.77

Interesante, oscuro, industrial, me gustó.

Bit of a murky dirge.

1. zizter - 0 2. night - 1 3. fun - 0 4. baby - 1 5. china - 1 6. boyz - 2 7. tiny - 2 8. mazz - 1

I saw Iggy pop live a couple of months ago and he looks so wrinkly

I’ve already espoused my love for Iggy, but combined with another genius musician like David Bowie how can you miss. Well, given the surrounding circumstances it could have been a disaster. Bowie and Iggy moved to Europe to kick their drug addictions and make music… and it worked out amazingly. This was Iggy’s last chance. Even after nearly single handedly inspiring punk, Iggy wasn’t getting his due. The Idiot and Lust For Life finally gave him, at least some of, the recognition he deserved. The Idiot was loosely inspired by the Dostoevsky novel of the same name and the cover art of both this album and David Bowie’s Heroes are nods to the painting Roquairol by Heckel. The music on The Idiot would also bear the European influence as the duo soaked in the nightlife and avant garde art by tapping into electronic and minimalist music of Germany and France and bands like Neu!, Kraftwerk and Can. Nightclubbing, Funtime and Mass Production bump along in the ambient darkness of a Munich underground club while always pushing Iggy’s American experience in the lyrics. The revelation of the original version of China Girl is jolt of American foreign policy and its effects on the culture of other countries but particularly China. If you’re only familiar with Bowie’s version released six years later, it can be quite a startling revelation. The song isn’t about a Chinese girl. Sister Midnight is a a dark, feminist satire and Dum Dum Boys is a tribute to the Stooges The Idiot is a sparse tight bunch of 8 near perfect songs and thankfully gave Iggy the second chance he deserved. 4.8 ^

7/10

The album title is how i felt about the singer all the way through this ordeal. Nonsense

This is basically a Bowie album with Iggy handling the vocals. Great stuff.

The more I listen to Iggy Pop, the more I enjoy his music. Weird, but pretty awesome.

An artist’s artist. He’s okay!