Self-titled David Bowie debut getting picture disc

Project will be released January 29, 2021

UMe/Decca/Deram Records will release a picture disc edition of David Bowie’s self-titled debut album on January 29, 2021. The set will be available exclusively at the UDiscover store.

Deram Records originally released David Bowie’s self-titled debut album on June 1, 1967, the very same day as The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. While it was not a hit at the time, over the past 50 years it’s gained a reputation for being a perfect snapshot of the time and has earned plaudits for being one of the first contemporary pop albums to be sung in an English accent. Bowie himself revisited songs from this era in 2000 re-recording the likes of “Silly Boy Blue” for an album called Toy which remains unreleased.

The album may not have been a huge success but there were music writers who saw something in Bowie, the NME called it “All very refreshing” and that he was “a very promising talent.”

The biography prepared at the time describes David Bowie thus “His remarkable powers of observation enable him to write with humour and wit about the people, loved and unloved, and the attitudes, lovely and unlovely, that constitute today’s society. A recent bout of ‘flu enabled him to pen half a dozen songs to go on a forthcoming Deram LP. In fact, David is one of the very few artists commissioned for an album before a single. Simultaneously, David is writing songs and situations for a colour film in which he is to star and putting the finishing touches to a unique cabaret act.”