The new Hunky Dory

I'm going to keep this one short because you may not like the result.

I'm not quite sure when it started but people often seem to mutter about when Bowie is going to do another Hunky Dory. I do remember ahead of the release of ...hours that people (reviewers, music journalists) were calling it "the new Hunky Dory".

Essentially it expresses a desire amongst some for Bowie to return to "songwriting".

Now listen, I love Hunky Dory. And "Quicksand" is one of my favourite songs of all time. I remember as a teenager lying in the dark late at night with my headphones on and just letting "Quicksand" wash over me (although, perversely, I never cared for "Life on Mars?" which seems to be everyone else's favourite including, it would seem, Sailor himself). But the desire for Bowie to return to "songwriting" rather than experimentation (musically and lyrically) seems to derogate a lot of his other great albums, not the least of which is Low.

Nevertheless, if that's what people want, let's see if we can find which of Bowie's albums is the new Hunky Dory.

Now there are lots of ways that an album can be the new Hunky Dory. There's the sound. There's the mood. There's the process. And there are the psychological themes.

Here, obviously, we will restrict ourselves to looking at the psychological themes [Footnote 1].

Because of a technical statsitical issue [Footnote 2] we have to build this up in stages using a form of analysis called cluster analysis. It allows us to find groups within the data, to identify which albums are like each other but different from other albums.

For the first analysis I looked to see how albums could be grouped on the basis of words reflecting Positive Emotion, Negative Emotion and Cognitive Mechanisms.

Based on a thing called a dendogram (a visual representation of how each album is grouped with other albums) it looks as though Bowie's twenty six albums form two main groups plus three relatively trivial (i.e. very small) groups. Hunky Dory is in Group 1 which seems to reflect low levels of positive emotion and high levels of cognitive mechanisms in comparison to Group 2 (Groups 3-5 are not analysed because they contain too few albums) [Footnote 3]. The other albums in Group 1 (as well as those in the other groups) are listed in the table below.

In a second cluster analysis I looked to see how albums could be grouped on the basis of social (rather than cognitive and emotional) words. Specifically I used the pronouns of I and We (recall from an earlier analysis that these indicate social inclusion [or a lack of it in the case of I]) as well as the more direct social category of Social Processes.

This analysis showed that there were three main groups and a couple of smaller trivial groups. This time Hunky Dory appears in Group 3 which reflects few references to I and more references to Social Processes. Group 2 reflects greater use of I and a moderate amount of Social Process words whereas Group 1 is low both on the use of I and Social process words (as above, Groups 4 and 5 are relatively trivial and so are not evaluated in this way) [Footnote 4]. The albums and the groups they belong to are listed in the table below.

So in summary it looks like Hunky Dory refers to high levels of social and cognitive processes but relatively little positive emotions. But which of Bowie's other albums is most similar in terms of these processes?

To make it easier to spot I've presented another table below listing all twenty six studio albums and I've indicated in red all those albums that appear in the same group as Hunky Dory. I've also underlined "all" those albums that appear in both lists. Obviously one of those albums that I've underlined is Hunky Dory (after all, that's the basis on which I decided to list the albums ... the group in which Hunky Dory appears).

Apart from Hunky Dory, only one other album appears in both lists ... Tonight!

Now, I think I can speak for all Bowie fans and say that Tonight is not one of our favourites. In Bowie Wonder World's poll it appeared 30th out of 30 (they included live albums in this poll, hence 30) and it's second from bottom in the voting for Bowie albums on the Rate Your Music website. Having said that, it did get to number 1 in the UK and number 11 in the US spending 19 and 24 weeks in these charts respectively so it didn't do as badly as the votes and polls might suggest. I remember cycling the 12 mile round trip to Dovercourt and back to buy it from Woolworth's the week it came out so I am in part responsible for this.

(Sorry)

I also remember when Tonight came out that Bowie called it "the new Pin Ups" because it was mostly covers (albeit that some of these were covers of songs Bowie had co-written with Iggy Pop for Lust for Life).

So we could bluff it and say that the new Hunky Dory is the new Pin Ups. But now we know the truth we shouldn't try and fool ourselves. Let's just keep a stiff upper lip and say it loud and proud.

TONIGHT IS THE NEW HUNKY DORY!

(Sorry)

Footnotes

Footnote 1: To do this I used a cluster analysis on the data for each album (rather than the individual songs).

Footnote 2: Specifically statistical power. There are only 26 albums so I used three word categories in the first analysis and another three word categories in the second analysis. Basically I am taking liberties with cluster analysis. Its purpose is to identify groups of caes (in this case albums) but I am looking to see if Hunky Dory can form a "group" with just one other album".

Footnote 3: Group 1 is 2.8% Positive Emotion and 5.8% Cognitive Mechanisms compared with Group 2 which is 3.9% Positive Emotion and 4.5% Cognitive Mechanisms. The differences between Groups 1 and 2 for both word categories are highly significant (t-values [df 18] are 4.24 and 5.95 respectively, both p-values < .001).

Footnote 4: Group 1 contains 5.7% I-words and 10.4% Social Processes, Group 2 contains 8.4% I-words and 11.9% Social Processes and Group 3 contains 4.8% I-words and 13.8% Social Processes. These differences are signifncant in a one-way ANOVA (F-values for I-words and Social Processes are 25.6 and 25.8 respectively, both p-values < .001). Groups don't differ significantly on their use of We-words.