'Hours...'

On the warm and melodic Hours, Bowie stripped down his music and opened his heart, airing some rarely heard self-doubt. During the downcast, slow-paced opener "Thursday's Child," he claims he tried hard all his life, and "nothing much happened all the same"—yes, that's Bowie saying his life was uneventful. Yet he sounds anything but old: on "Survive," he revives his Anthony Newley accent while firebrand guitarist Reeves Gabrels strums an acoustic, and suddenly it feels like 1971 and we're in Hunky Dory territory again.