After David Bowie played the Glastonbury music festival in 2000, he hit the recording studio to reimagine a set of songs that he first recorded in the late 1960s. The album, titled Toy, will finally be released on Bowie's 75th birthday, January 7, 2022. Above is the first single. From Rhino:
The seeds of TOY were first sown in 1999 during the making of an episode of VH-1 Storytellers. David wanted to perform something from his pre-'Space Oddity' career, so he reached back to 1966 and dusted off 'Can't Help Thinking About Me' for the first time in thirty years. The song remained in the setlist for the short promotional tour for the 'hours…' album, and in early 2000 David and producer Mark Plati compiled a list of some of Bowie's earliest songs to re-record.
From Spin:
Bowie recorded the album with Sterling Campbell, Gail Ann Dorsey, Earl Slick, Mike Garson, Holly Palmer, Emm Gryner, Lisa Germano, Gerry Leonard, and Cuong Vu.
"Toy is like a moment in time captured in an amber of joy, fire, and energy," Bowie's co-producer Mark Plati said in a statement. "It's the sound of people happy to be playing music. David revisited and re-examined his work from decades prior through prisms of experience and fresh perspective — a parallel not lost on me as I now revisit it twenty years later. From time to time, he used to say 'Mark, this is our album,' — I think because he knew I was so deeply in the trenches with him on that journey. I'm happy to finally be able to say it now belongs to all of us."
