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
- Creator Backlash: Bowie bemoaned how widely-copied the album's drum sound became during the '80s, both dismissing it as a "depressive gorilla effect" and openly regretting its creation in a 1983 Musician interview.
- Creator Breakdown: The album was recorded during a period of personal turmoil for Bowie, who was going through rehabilitation from a severe cocaine addiction and was facing a collapsing marriage to his first wife, Angela. This ended up playing a significant role in the album's dour, minimalist tone.
- Executive Meddling: RCA Records were horrified by the blatantly noncommercial, experimental direction of Low and pushed for Bowie to record something closer to the style of Young Americans; his ex-manager, who still held partial control over his work, outright tried to block the record's release as well. Bowie, however, persisted, and the album was released with zero changes; he even went so far as to hang RCA's initial rejection letter on his wall out of spite. This conflict is nowadays regarded as the main catalyst in increased tensions between Bowie and RCA that culminated in his leaving the label in 1982.
- Invisible Advertising: Much to RCA Records' dismay, Bowie deliberately opted not to tour for the album, instead working as a faceless backing musician on Iggy Pop's own tour for The Idiot. RCA themselves did little to promote the album, even delaying it past its original November 1976 release date due to their belief that it was too bleak and uncommercial for the Christmas season. Despite this mutual lack of advertising, the album was a commercial success, if only off of brand recognition.
- Referenced by...:
- The 1977 EP Bowi by Nick Lowe was a Pun-Based Title on this album. Lowe did this because Low seemed like a pun on his name, without the final letter "e". So he did the same with Bowie's name. Also, Lowe's 1978 album Jesus of Cool includes an Affectionate Parody of "Sound and Vision" called "(I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass"; according to Lowe, the similar title to this album's "Breaking Glass" is a coincidence.
- Joy Division initially called themselves "Warsaw" after the title of "Warszawa" from this album.
- "Warszawa" is featured in the film Christiane F. from 1981.
- Philip Glass "1st Symphony 'Low'" from 1992 was inspired by this album, even having three movements titled after (and based on) songs from this record: "Subterraneans", "Some Are" and "Warszawa". Later he would also base his 4th Symphony on Bowie's "Heroes" in 1996 and his 12th Symphony on Lodger in 2018 (following over 20 years of Development Hell).
- Eddie and the Hot Rods based their song "Always Crashing in the Same Bar" on Bowie's "Always Crashing in the Same Car".
- The short film Always Crashing in the Same Car takes its name from a song on this album.
- The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The album was completed in November of 1976 but took another two months to release, owing to both RCA Records' distaste of the music's lack of commercial viability (especially for the Christmas season) and the efforts of Tony Defries, Bowie's ex-manager and partial rightsholder at the time, to prevent the album's release.
- Throw It In!: The three-note leitmotif in "Warszawa" was born from Tony Visconti's four-year-old son tinkering with a piano in the studio.
- What Could Have Been: "Always Crashing in the Same Car" originally had a comedic third verse that Bowie sung in imitation of Bob Dylan. However, the other musicians found it insensitive given Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident (the song itself being based on an incident where Bowie attempted to run over a drug dealer), prompting Bowie to have the verse removed.
