Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Blender
Consequence of Sound	positive
Entertainment Weekly	B-
The Music Box
NME
The New York Times	positive
Q
Rolling Stone
Sputnikmusic	3.5/5
Stereogum	generally favourable
Trouser Press	generally favourable

1. Outside (commonly referred to as Outside) is a concept album first released 25 September 1995 by David Bowie on Virgin Records, and Bowie's nineteenth studio album. The album was Bowie's reunion with Brian Eno, whom Bowie had worked with, among the others, on his Berlin Trilogy in the 1970s. Subtitled "The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper-cycle", Outside centres on the characters of a dystopian world on the eve of the 21st century. The album put Bowie back into the mainstream scene of rock music with its singles "The Hearts Filthy Lesson", "Strangers When We Meet", and "Hallo Spaceboy" (remixed by the Pet Shop Boys).

Bowie had reconnected with Brian Eno at his wedding to Iman Abdulmajid in 1992. Bowie and Eno each played pieces of their own music at the wedding reception and delighted at the "ebb and flow" of couples on the dance floor. At that point, Bowie knew "we were both interested in nibbling at the periphery of the mainstream rather than jumping in. We sent each other long manifestoes about what was missing in music and what we should be doing. We decided to really experiment and go into the studio with not even a gnat of an idea." Bowie and Eno visited the Gugging psychiatric hospital near Vienna, Austria in early 1994 and interviewed and photographed its patients, who were famous for their "Outsider Art". Bowie and Eno brought some of that art back with them into the studio as they worked together in March 1994, coming up with a three-hour piece that was mostly dialogue. Late in 1994, Q magazine asked Bowie to write a diary for 10 days (to later be published in the magazine), but Bowie, fearful his diary would be boring ("...going to a studio, coming home and going to bed"), instead wrote a diary for one of the fictional characters (Nathan Adler) from his earlier improvisation with Eno. Bowie said "Rather than 10 days, it became 15 years in his life!" This became the basis for the story of 1. Outside.

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Wikipedia