Hear the first song from it, "You've Got a Habit of Leaving," now.
One of the holy grails of David Bowie fandom, the legendary unreleased 2001 album Toy, is finally set for release. "Depending where you are on the planet, if it’s 29th September you might be streaming the radio edit of 'You've Got A Habit Of Leaving' from the forthcoming Toy album, via your favourite streaming service. More details regarding that and the rest of the Era Five box, later today," read a tweet from announcing the project, which will be folded into the latest career-spanning set from the Bowie estate.
The unreleased album produced by Mark Plati (The Cure, LouReed) was originally supposed to come out 20 years ago and feature some re-recorded versions of some of Bowie's earliest songs from the 1960s. A version of the album leaked in 2011 featuring the new songs "Uncle Floyd," "Afraid" and the title track, as well as refreshed takes on "Baby Loves That Way," "I Dig Everything," "Conversation Piece," "Let Me Sleep Beside You" and "Silly Boy Blue."
The collection was shelved and instead Bowie released the anxious collection Heathen in 2002. According to the release, Toy will be included in the Era Five box set, the details of which were slate for release later in the day on Wednesday. The follow-up to 2018's Era 4: Loving the Alien (1983-1988), is slated to cover the years 1993 to 2001.
The news was accompanied by the release of the radio edit of the swaying doo-wop-inspired "You've Got a Habit of Leaving," which features long-time collaborators Gail Ann Dorsey (bass), Mike Garson (piano), Sterling Campbell (drums) and Earl Slick (guitar), as well as Emm Gryner (backing vocals), Holly Palmer (percussion, backing vocals), Lisa Germano (backing vocals, violin) and Plati on acoustic and electric guitar.
"You've got a habit of leaving me/ And you've got a habit of deserting me/ Sometimes I cry/ Sometimes I'm so sad/ Sometimes I'm so glad, so glad/ You could got on if you wanted to, wanted to, wanted to," Bowie sings on the track as a group of backing vocalists add in some retro "ooh-wah-ooh"'s.
Listen to "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" below.

