David Bowie | Space Oddity | The Man Who Sold the World | Hunky Dory
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars | Aladdin Sane | Pin Ups | Diamond Dogs | Young Americans
Station to Station | Low | "Heroes" | Lodger | Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) | Let's Dance | Tonight | Never Let Me Down
Tin Machine | Black Tie White Noise | The Buddha of Suburbia | Outside | Earthling | 'hours...' | Heathen | Reality | 'hours...'
The Next Day | ★ | Changesonebowie
- Better Export for You: The Hong Kong release added a bonus disc containing "A Fleeting Moment", a Mandarin re-recording of "Seven Years in Tibet".
- Cut Song: Bowie re-recorded "Stay", "I Can't Read", and "Baby Universal" during the sessions for Earthling with the intent of featuring them on the album, as well as "Nuts" with the intention of releasing it as a B-side. However, as development went on, these recordings ultimately went unused; they would later serve as the basis for Bowie's live performances of these songs during the era for Earthling, and the studio versions of the re-recordings would ultimately surface on the Is It Any Wonder? EP in 2020.note
- Promoted Fanboy: Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, a longtime fan of Bowie's work, produced most of the single remixes of "I'm Afraid of Americans" and starred in its music video as a stalker chasing Bowie through New York.
- What Could Have Been: A great deal of it surrounds this album's development.
- As mentioned on the main page, the original intention behind Earthling was to primarily feature re-recordings of older hits interspersed with a few newer songs, before Bowie eventually shifted in favor of making an entirely original album; the re-recorded songs would not resurface until the Is It Any Wonder? EP in 2020, though the arrangements Bowie created for these re-recordings did manage to see use in live performances.
- Even after Bowie shifted in favor of an album full of original songs, the tracklist was originally radically different and still included the re-recordings of "I Can't Read" and "Baby Universal"; Bowie ultimately pulled these two songs from the album, replacing "I Can't Read '97" with "The Last Thing You Should Do" and removing the slot for "Baby Universal '97" entirely, cutting the album down from 10 tracks to 9. The proposed tracklist for this version of the album, not publicly revealed until 2020, is as follows:1. "Little Wonder"
2. "Looking for Satellites"
3. "Battle for Britain (The Letter)"
4. "Seven Years in Tibet"
5. "Dead Man Walking"
6. "Telling Lies"
7. "I Can't Read '97"
8. "I'm Afraid of Americans"
9. "Baby Universal '97"
10. "Law (Earthlings on Fire)" - Even before the sessions for the re-recordings began, Bowie intended to attempt re-recording Never Let Me Down, having spent nearly a decade being dogged by its poor quality and overwhelmingly negative reception. Bowie previously tried to re-record the album in late 1987, but Reeves Gabrels convinced him to drop the idea at the time because it had only been a matter of months since the original album's release. Bowie's plans for a re-recording in 1996 ultimately fell through as well however for reasons unknown, and a redone NLMD would never come to fruition until 2018, two years after Bowie's death.
- The tracks "The Last Thing You Should Do" and "Nuts" were originally recorded with the intention of making them B-sides. However, as mentioned above, "The Last Thing You Should Do" was ultimately included in Earthling proper after "I Can't Read '97" and "Baby Universal '97" were dropped from the tracklist; "Nuts" meanwhile went unreleased in any form until 2020, via the Is It Any Wonder? EP.
- "I'm Afraid of Americans" was originally recorded during the Outside sessions and meant to be featured on the Johnny Mnemonic soundtrack, only for Brian Eno to dissuade Bowie from it, allegedly because he heard that the film sucked
. It instead wound up in the soundtrack to Showgirls, a far more notorious critical and commercial bomb, before being re-recorded for Earthling.
