David Bowie’s 2001 LP “Toy” to Get an Official Release (and an Extremely Upsetting Album Cover)

A re-recorded version of “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving” was shared with the announcement. 
David Bowie’s 2001 LP “Toy” to Get an Official Release (and an Extremely Upsetting Album Cover)

A re-recorded version of “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving” was shared with the announcement. 

Words: Margaret Farrell

September 29, 2021

David Bowie‘s lost album Toy, which was initially set for release in 2001, is officially getting a release date as part of David Bowie 5: Brilliant Adventure that’s out November 26, followed by its own boxset on January 7. Toy came together after Bowie’s successful 2000 Glastonbury Festival and was recorded live with the same band. Due to it being a hectic period at Virgin Records, Toy was shelved and Bowie moved on to publish music under his label ISO, which had a distribution agreement with Columbia.

Although Toy was leaked in 2011, we now get the joy of owning it in physical form (only if want to have regular nightmares). The bizarre new cover features Bowie’s adult face imposed onto a baby. It’s unsettling to say the least, especially with the heavily saturated black-and-white filter. Maybe the idea for the cover was the result of this album’s songs coming from the beginning of Bowie’s career during the Britpop scene in the 1960s. Or maybe it was inspired by the fact that Bowie was about to have a baby at the time of the album’s intended release. Who knows!

What we do have is a quote from Toy‘s co-producer Mark Plati, who said: “Toy is like a moment in time captured in an amber of joy, fire, and energy. 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 20 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.”

Check out the rerecorded version of “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving” below. You can pre-order David Bowie 5: Brilliant Adventure here, and Toy:Box here.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by David Bowie (@davidbowie)