The Idiot album cover
The Idiot

Iggy Pop

1977
RCA Victor

David Bowie and Iggy Pop needed each other in 1976. They’d fled Los Angeles (where Bowie was succumbing to cocaine addiction, and Pop was literally institutionalized) for Berlin, setting up as roommates and making four studio albums in two years — Bowie’s Low and “Heroes”, and Pop’s The Idiot and Lust For Life. All four are among the best work either man ever did. The Idiot feels like about a 70-30 collaboration, with Bowie writing most of the music and Pop contributing lyrics, some of them improvised, but it’s the latter man’s irrepressible, anarchic personality that sends a jolt of electricity through the primitive, one-riff melodies and minimal, ticking drum machine beats. Iggy in vampiric crooner mode was setting the world up for postpunk and Goth, before first-wave punk had even gotten its boots on.

Phil Freeman

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