Bowie regarded 22nd studio album Heathen as up there among his best work
Bowie had always looked back as much as he’d looked forward, but to wallow exclusively in the warm waters of nostalgia really wasn’t his style. So while the concept of Bowie revisiting his 60s catalogue for the planned Toy album excited many fans, others thought that this was an uncharacteristically navel-gazing move for an artist whose most vital work had always felt summoned from the future. Virgin Records presumably felt the same, declining to release Toy, reportedly angering Bowie and causing him to depart the label.
Still, Bowie had already started work on his next album. Bowie and Tony Visconti had reconciled their differences in 1998 and talk had turned to them working together once again, for the first time since 1980’s Scary Monsters. The resulting album was to be, in Bowie’s words, a collection of “serious songs to be sung”. He was true to his word and Heathen turned out to be a powerful record that reflected Bowie’s concerns with the new century, his melancholy following the death of his mother and, as the title suggests, his ever-troubled spirituality.