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Nothing Has Changed (also titled Nothing Has Changed: The Very Best of David Bowie) is a compilation album by English musician David Bowie. It was released on 18 November 2014 through Parlophone in the United Kingdom, and Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings in the United States. It is the first album to showcase Bowie's entire career and includes a new composition, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)", which was later re-recorded for his final album Blackstar (stylized as ★) (2016). Nothing Has Changed is notable for including songs from Bowie's unreleased 2001 album Toy: "Your Turn to Drive", previously an internet-only single, and a previously unreleased re-recorded version of "Let Me Sleep Beside You", both of which are found on the triple CD version of the album. The album's title comes from a lyric in the song "Sunday" from Bowie's album Heathen (2002).
The album was released in four formats: a triple CD version (sequenced in reverse chronological order), a double CD version (sequenced in chronological order), a double LP version, and a single CD version released exclusive to select countries. It should be noted that the track listed as "Fashion (single version)" is not in fact the original single edit and has been incorrectly re-edited from the remastered album version of "Fashion". The original single edit can be heard on the compilations Best of Bowie, The Platinum Collection and The Best of David Bowie 1980/1987.
The album debuted at number 9 in the United Kingdom, becoming Bowie's 29th top 10 album, going on to peak at number 5 following Bowie's death in early 2016. It has been certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for sales of over 100,000.
A revised version of the two-disc Nothing Has Changed, re-titled Bowie Legacy, was released on 11 November 2016 and includes selections from Blackstar.
User Album Review
Nothing Has Changed is a bit of a cheeky title for a career retrospective from an artist who is known as a chameleon, and this triple-disc compilation has other tricks up its sleeve. Chief among these is sequencing the SuperDeluxe 59-track set in reverse chronological order, so it opens with the brand-new, jazz-inflected "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and concludes with David Bowie's debut single, "Liza Jane." On paper, this seems a bit like a stunt, but in actuality it's a sly way to revisit and recontextualize a career that has been compiled many, many times before. Previously, there have been single discs, double discs, and triple-disc boxes, but the largest of these was Sound + Vision, a box released in 1989, and the most recent was 2002's The Best of Bowie, which featured slightly different track listings in different territories but generally stopped in the late '90s. The two-CD version of Nothing Has Changed resembles this 2002 set -- there are absences, notably "John, I'm Only Dancing," "Diamond Dogs," and "TVC15," but they're not noticed among the parade of standards -- but it's easily overshadowed by the triple-disc SuperDeluxe set. This version of Nothing Has Changed touches upon nearly every phrase of Bowie's career, bypassing Tin Machine but finding space for early pre-"Space Oddity" singles that often don't make Bowie's comps, and naturally it samples from his fine Y2K records, plus his 2013 comeback The Next Day. This expansiveness alone would be noteworthy, but when it's combined with the reverse sequencing the compilation forces listeners to reconsider an artist whose legacy seemed so set in stone it appropriately was enshrined in museums. Obvious high-water marks are undersold -- there's not as much Ziggy as usual, nor as much Berlin -- so other eras can also enter the canon, whether it's the assured maturity of the new millennium or the appealing juvenilia of the '60s. The end result is something unexpected: a compilation that makes us hear an artist we know well in a whole new way.
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