Bowie, like the latter-era Beatles before him, perceived the album format as the primary creative artefact, with singles being secondary considerations. From the consistent musical vibes of the hard rocking The Man Who Sold The World and foregrounded songwriting of Hunky Dory, to the more narratively driven The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars’ sequencing, to the emotive, experimental journey of ‘the Berlin trilogy’ and the outre, ‘hyper-cycle’ of his mid-90s return to the avant garde: 1. Outside – for David Bowie, the full-album experience was king.
Throughout the 1970s, David Bowie released an eclectic yet still critically revered gamut of records at an impressive rate, all of which were explicitly designed and conceived with the vinyl format in mind, since it was pretty much the only way to hear music during the decade.