Reckoning with David Bowie’s Rough Patch: Loving the Alien (1983-1988)

by Ned Lannamann
It’s become a yearly tradition: A massive David Bowie box has been released every fall since 2015, the first appearing a few months before his death in January 2016. Each one has comprehensively covered excerpts of his long career, and 2018’s installment tackles perhaps the most controversial period of all: Bowie’s glossy ’80s records, when the arty chameleon leapt into the mainstream pop world, no longer setting trends but following them, and embracing t