David Bowie’s Massive Late-Period I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002 – 2016) 180g 18LP Box Set Is Destined for Release on September 12
Let’s face the music and dance, shall we? And what I mean by that is a new, and quite big, David Bowie box set is a-coming. It’s titled (with prefix number included here, even though I left it out of the headline on purpose!) 6. I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002 – 2016), and it will be released in a massive 180g 18LP collection via Parlophone on September 12, 2025 (in addition to a companion 12CD cube and its concurrent availability on all major streaming outlets, of course).
Said collection comprises twilight-era Bowie classic albums Heathen, Reality, A Reality Tour, The Next Day, The Next Day Extra EP, ★ (Blackstar), and the No Plan EP, plus a previously unreleased 31-track live set from his 2002 Montreux Jazz Festival performance and Re:Call 6, the latter of which features 41 rare non-album tracks in all.
As you let all that content sink in, check out the box set’s first single “New Killer Star (Sessions @ AOL, 23/09/03)” via the link below. “Ready, set, go. . .”
6. I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002 – 2016) is, as its prefix number indicates, the sixth in a series of Parlophone-curated box sets spanning the balance of Bowie’s career from 1969 onwards. The five previous installments were September 2015’s 1. Five Years (1969 – 1973), September 2016’s 2. Who Can I Be Now? (1974 – 1976), September 2017’s 3. A New Career in a New Town (1977 – 1982), October 2018’s 4. Loving The Alien (1983 – 1988), and November 2021’s 5. Brilliant Adventure (1992 – 2001).
6. I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002 – 2016) was named after the quite stirring closing track on January 2016’s ★ (Blackstar), Bowie’s final full-length studio album. All of the albums in this box set have been newly remastered except for the aforementioned ★ (Blackstar) and No Plan EP, and they were done so with input from Bowie’s longtime co-producer Tony Visconti. (I expect additional pressing-related stats to be forthcoming.)
The SRP for 6. I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002 – 2016) is, gulp, a quite formidable $449.98, and it’s available for preorder now at Bowie’s official site store here. Though I readily concede that the entry fee to Everything is indeed quite steep, history and the depth of content and presentation happen to be on Parlophone’s side here in terms of the new 18LP box set’s overall worthiness, content durability, and value of repeated playback.
I have all five previous box sets in this series in both their LP and CD forms, and I return to the vinyl editions quite often, truth be told. To get a taste of what they’re all about, you can check out my review of the Five Years box on our sister site Sound & Vision here, which was posted on January 11, 2016.
Some Everything album-by-album stats now, by way of official press materials provided by the label and, as always, peppered with my additional notes and comments all throughout. June 2002’s Heathen was, in fact, the first album Bowie and Visconti had worked on together in 22 years — September 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) having been the last one prior. Recorded in a residential studio in upstate New York, Heathen reminded Visconti of his time with Bowie in Berlin in the 1970s, as he recounts in the liners: “There was no control room. The console was at one end of the studio, and the band was placed at the other end. The acoustics were quite live, and from my experience of making [October 1977’s] ‘Heroes’ at Hansa Studios in Berlin, in the huge Grand Hall (known as Meistersaal recording hall), I wanted to make these acoustics work for us.”
For the follow-up Reality LP, released in September 2003, Visconti recalls that “David said he wanted to write for his new touring band, who would also record the album,” with the impetus being to give the record a more “thrusty” sound, as Bowie himself oh-so-viscerally put it at the time. That band then took to the road for the subsequent A Reality Tour, one of the best-loved outings of Bowie’s career — and I can personally attest to that statement, having seen a fully rousing, audience-engaging show at Madison Square Garden in NYC on December 15, 2003.
A Reality Tour is represented on Everything for the first time in its resequenced order to better reflect the setlists of the two Dublin shows he performed there that November. The vinyl for A Reality Tour is transparent blue, echoing its initial October 2016 3LP release on ISO/Columbia/Legacy.
After a decade away from the studio, the sessions for March 2013’s The Next Day happened in secret. As Visconti says of that time, “We vowed not to tell a soul that David and we were making a new album — and that even included our domestic partners. His two-fold purpose was to write and create without pressure from the outside, plus he wanted its release to be a complete surprise. It all worked out great, except when he was spotted a few times walking to and from The Magic Shop studio in Noho, Manhattan, raising quizzical eyebrows. I was stopped once by a fan who recognized me and asked, ‘Is David Bowie making a new album?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not!’ Later, when we had rough mixes of our efforts, I was walking around Manhattan with a big smile on my face. No one could possibly know that I was listening to new Bowie songs on my earbuds.” Those literally magical sessions produced so many songs that five additional tracks, along with two remixes, were included on November 2013’s The Next Day Extra EP.
And then came ★ (Blackstar), Bowie’s final studio album, which was released on his 69th birthday on January 8, 2016, a mere two days before his passing. During that album’s gestation period, Bowie and Visconti went to see Donny McCaslin’s jazz quartet playing live in New York after working with him on the track “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime).” According to Visconti, “Donny’s quartet was no ordinary jazz band; they were super musicians at the same level as classical musicians in top symphony orchestras. David told me that this band, with Mark Guiliana on drums, Tim Lefebvre on bass, and Jason Lindner on keyboards, [would] be the band for the recording of ★.”
Every one of the tracks for ★ (Blackstar) were each recorded in one day. Visconti confirms that “the first song for the album began with ‘’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore,’ on 7th January [2015]. With a couple of rehearsals with David singing in the isolation booth, we were ready to go. Take one was perfect. We told Donny the take was fabulous. He thanked us and asked, ‘What’s the next song?’ I forgot that jazz musicians are one-take experts. This was not a normal thing for people who make rock and pop music. It usually takes many hours to get that great take. Just to play it safe, we asked for another take, and Donny complied.”
In my own December 2016 year-end review of ★ (Blackstar), I wrote, “Sound with vision, made all the more touchingly poignant by Bowie’s passing just one day after its January 9 release. Blackstar keeps on amazing the ears and the heart almost a full year later, from the chilling resurrection ruminations of ‘Lazarus’ to the haunting electro-symphonics of the title track to the hold-back-the-tears uplift of the final song ‘I Can't Give Everything Away.’ It’s as elevating as a personal elegy could possibly be. David Bowie has bid us adieu, and there’s nothing we can do — except continue to celebrate, listen to, and marvel at his perpetually top-shelf aural legacy.” Almost a full decade later, ★ (Blackstar) continues to hold up as one of the best LPs of Bowie’s long and storied career.
On his first posthumous birthday on January 8, 2017, the No Plan EP brought together the original songs written for Bowie’s Off-Broadway play, Lazarus, including the titular “Lazarus,” “No Plan,” “Killing a Little Time,” and “When I Met You,” all of which were recorded during the ★ (Blackstar) sessions.
And then we have the pair of box set exclusives, both of them spread over 4LPs respectively: Montreux Jazz Festival and Re:Call 6. The former was recorded on July 18, 2002, at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and among its 31 tracks are a full performance bar one song of one of Bowie’s most revered albums, January 1977’s Low. Meanwhile, Re:Call 6 features 41 non-album alternate versions, B-sides, and soundtrack songs, including a number of tracks that were never previously available on CD or vinyl. (See the full tracklisting below to find out what they all are.)
As for the Everything box set’s additional offerings, its 84-page accompanying book includes previously unseen notes, drawings, and handwritten lyrics from Bowie, along with photos by Sukita (who also took the collection’s striking cover shot), Jimmy King, Frank W. Ockenfels 3, Markus Klinko, Mark “Blammo” Adams, and others, as well as memorabilia, technical notes about the albums from co-producer Tony Visconti, and design notes from Jonathan Barnbrook.
No matter how you cut it, it’s no broad stroke to say I dig Everything — and I bet you will too, even if your wallet may initially say otherwise. This is all I ever meant / That’s the message that I sent. . .
DAVID BOWIE
6. I CAN’T GIVE EVERYTHING AWAY (2002 – 2016)
18LP (Parlophone)
Heathen (1LP)
Side 1
1. Sunday
2. Cactus
3. Slip Away
4. Slow Burn
5. Afraid
6. I’ve Been Waiting For You
Side 2
1. I Would Be Your Slave
2. I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spaceship
3. 5:15 The Angels Have Gone
4. Everyone Says ʻHiʼ
5. A Better Future
6. Heathen (The Rays)
Montreux Jazz Festival (4LP)
LP1, Side 1
1. Sunday
2. Life On Mars?
3. Ashes To Ashes
4. Cactus
LP1, Side 2
1. Slip Away
2. China Girl
3. Starman
4. I Would Be Your Slave
LP2, Side 3
1. I’ve Been Waiting For You
2. Stay
3. Changes
4. Fashion
LP2, Side 4
1. Fame
2. I’m Afraid Of Americans
3. 5:15 The Angels Have Gone
4. ‟Heroes”
LP3, Side 5
1. Heathen (The Rays)
2. Everyone Says ‘Hi’
3. Hallo Spaceboy
LP3, Side 6
1. Letʼs Dance
2. Ziggy Stardust
3. Warszawa
LP4, Side 7
1. Speed Of Life
2. Breaking Glass
3. What In The World
4. Sound And Vision
5. Art Decade
LP4, Side 8
1. Always Crashing In The Same Car
2. Be My Wife
3. A New Career In A New Town
4. Subterraneans
Reality (1LP)
Side 1
1. New Killer Star
2. Pablo Picasso
3. Never Get Old
4. The Loneliest Guy
5. Looking For Water
6. She’ll Drive The Big Car
Side 2
1. Days
2. Fall Dog Bombs The Moon
3. Try Some, Buy Some
4. Reality
5. Bring Me The Disco King
A Reality Tour (3LP)
LP1, Side 1
1. Rebel Rebel
2. New Killer Star
3. Reality
4. Fame
5. Cactus
6. Sister Midnight
LP1, Side 2
1. Afraid
2. All The Young Dudes
3. Be My Wife
4. China Girl
5. The Loneliest Guy
6. The Man Who Sold The World
7. Fantastic Voyage
LP2, Side 3
1. Hallo Spaceboy
2. Sunday
3. Under Pressure
4. Life On Mars?
5. Battle For Britain (The Letter)
LP2, Side 4
1. Fall Dog Bombs The Moon
2. Ashes To Ashes
3. The Motel
4. Loving The Alien
5. Breaking Glass
6. Never Get Old
LP3, Side 5
1. Changes
2. I’m Afraid Of Americans
3. ‟Heroes”
4. Bring Me The Disco King
LP3, Side 6
1. Slip Away
2. Heathen (The Rays)
3. Five Years
4. Hang On To Yourself
5. Ziggy Stardust
The Next Day (2LP)
LP1, Side 1
1. The Next Day
2. Dirty Boys
3. The Stars (Are Out Tonight)
4. Love Is Lost
LP1, Side 2
1. Where Are We Now?
2. Valentine’s Day
3. If You Can See Me
4. I’d Rather Be High
LP2, Side 3
1. Boss Of Me
2. Dancing Out In Space
3. How Does The Grass Grow?
4. (You Will) Set The World On Fire
LP2, Side 4
1. You Feel So Lonely You Could Die
2. Heat
3. So She
4. Plan
5. I’ll Take You There
The Next Day Extra EP (1LP)
Side 1
1. Atomica
2. Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix By James Murphy For The DFA)
3. The Informer
Side 2
1. I’d Rather Be High (Venetian Mix)
2. Like A Rocket Man
3. Born In A UFO
4. God Bless The Girl
★ (Blackstar) (1LP)
Side 1
1. ★
2. ’Tis A Pity She Was A Whore
3. Lazarus
Side 2
1. Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)
2. Girl Loves Me
3. Dollar Days
4. I Can’t Give Everything Away
No Plan EP (1LP)
Side 1
1. Lazarus
2. No Plan
3. Killing A Little Time
4. When I Met You
Side 2
* No music – etching only
Re:Call 6 (4LP)
LP1, Side 1
1. Slow Burn (Single Edit)
2. Wood Jackson
3. When The Boys Come Marching Home
4. Safe
5. Sunday (Moby Remix)
LP1, Side 2
1. A Better Future (Remix By Air)
2. Slip Away (SACD Mix)
3. Slow Burn (SACD Mix)
4. I’ve Been Waiting For You (SACD Mix)
5. 5:15 The Angels Have Gone (SACD Mix)
LP2, Side 3
1. A Better Future (SACD Mix)
2. Safe (SACD Mix)
3. Everyone Says ‘Hi’ (Radio Edit)
4. Sunday (Tony Visconti Mix)
5. Everyone Says ‘Hi’ (Metro Remix Radio Edit)
LP2, Side 4
1. Heathen (The Rays) (Live In Berlin, 22/09/02)
2. Hop Frog – Lou Reed Featuring David Bowie
3. Saviour – Kristeen Young Featuring David Bowie
4. Isn’t It Evening (The Revolutionary) – Earl Slick Featuring David Bowie
5. Bring Me The Disco King (Loner Mix) – David Bowie Featuring Maynard James Keenan And John Frusciante (Taken From The Underworld Motion Picture Soundtrack)
LP3, Side 5
1. New Killer Star (Radio Edit)
2. Love Missile F1-11
3. Fly
4
. Queen Of All The Tarts (Overture)
5. Never Get Old (Single Edit)
6. Waterloo Sunset
LP3, Side 6
1. Rebel Rebel (2003 Re-Record) (Taken From The Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle Motion Picture Soundtrack)
2. New Killer Star (Sessions @ AOL Live Version, 23/09/03)
3. Days (Live)
4. 5:15 The Angels Have Gone (Live)
5. Rebel Never Gets Old (Radio Mix)
6. (She Can) Do That – David Bowie With BT (Taken From The Stealth Motion Picture Soundtrack)
LP4, Side 7
1. Life On Mars? (Live At Fashion Rocks, 08/09/05)
2. Wake Up (Live At Fashion Rocks, 08/09/05) – David Bowie With Arcade Fire
3. Five Years (Live At Fashion Rocks, 08/09/05) – David Bowie With Arcade Fire
4. Arnold Layne (Live At The Royal Albert Hall, 29/05/06) – David Gilmour Featuring David Bowie
5. Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix By James Murphy For The DFA Edit)
LP4, Side 8
1. Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) (2014 Version)
2. ’Tis A Pity She Was A Whore (2014 Version)
3. Lazarus (Radio Edit)
4. I Can’t Give Everything Away (Radio Edit)