Never Let Me Down
1987 album by David Bowie
Never Let Me Down is the seventeenth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 21 April 1987 through EMI America Records. Co-produced by Bowie and David Richards and featuring the guitarist Peter Frampton, the album was recorded in Switzerland and New York City from September to November 1986. Bowie's goal for the project was to record it differently following his disappointment with 1984's Tonight. Musically, Never Let Me Down has been characterised as pop rock, art rock and hard rock; Bowie himself considered the record a return to rock and roll music. The cover artwork features Bowie surrounded by numerous elements from the songs.
Never Let Me Down was commercially successful, reaching the UK top 10; its three singles all reached the UK top 40. Despite this, the album was poorly received by fans and was met with negative reviews from critics, with most criticising the "overblown" production. Bowie supported it on the Glass Spider Tour, a world tour that was at that point the biggest, most theatrical and elaborate tour of his career. The tour, like the album, was commercially successful but critically panned. The critical failure of the album and tour were factors that led Bowie to look for a new way to motivate himself creatively, leading him to create the rock band Tin Machine in 1989; he did not release another solo album until Black Tie White Noise in 1993.
“Never Let Me Down” enters the record as 1987 album by David Bowie. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Never, Down and album can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Never Let Me Down” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Never, Down and album provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q670351. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1986, 1984 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “Never Let Me Down” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.