Following the largely acoustic and folk rock sound of David Bowie (1969), The Man Who Sold the World marked a shift toward hard rock, with elements of blues rock. The lyrics are darker than his previous releases, exploring themes of insanity, religion, technology and war. None of its songs were released as singles; some tracks appeared as B-sides between 1970 and 1973. The album original titled was Metrobolist, a play on the film Metropolis (1927), but the title was changed at the last minute by Mercury without Bowie's consultation.
The album was released with different cover artwork in the US and the UK. For the US release, the artwork was a cartoon-like drawing by Michael J. Weller of a cowboy in front of an asylum. The UK cover by Keith MacMillan features Bowie wearing a Michael Fish-designed blue dress. A 1972 reissue by RCA Records featured a black-and-white picture of Bowie's then-current character Ziggy Stardust; reissues since 1990 have revived the original UK artwork.
Realising that his potential as a solo artist was dwindling, Bowie formed a band, Hype, with the bassist Tony Visconti, one of his Space Oddity collaborators, the drummer John Cambridge, and the guitarist Mick Ronson, whom Bowie met in February 1970. For the group's performances, the members wore flamboyant superhero-like costumes. Bowie halted Hype performances at the end of March 1970 so he could focus on recording and songwriting, and resolve managing disputes with his manager Kenneth Pitt.
Cambridge was dismissed from Hype at the end of March, and was replaced by Mick "Woody" Woodmansey. Woodmansey said of Bowie in 2015: "This guy was living and breathing being a rock & roll star." By April 1970, the four members of Hype were living in Haddon Hall, Beckenham, an Edwardian mansion converted to a block of flats that was described by one visitor as having an ambiance "like Dracula's living room". Ronson and Visconti built a makeshift studio under the grand staircase at Haddon Hall, where Bowie recorded many of his early 1970s demos
Recording for The Man Who Sold the World began on 17 April 1970 at Advision Studios in London, with the group beginning work on "All the Madmen". The next day, Ralph Mace was hired to play a Moog synthesiser following his work on the single version of "Memory of a Free Festival". At the time, Mace was a 40-year-old concert pianist who was also head of the classical music department at Mercury Records. During this time, Bowie terminated his contract with Pitt and met his future manager Tony Defries, who assisted Bowie in the termination. Recording moved to Trident Studios in London on 21 April and continued there until mid-May. On 4 May, the band recorded "Running Gun Blues" and "Saviour Machine", the latter of which was originally the working title for the title track, before Bowie reworked the song into a different melody to form the final version of "Saviour Machine". Recording and mixing was moved back to Advision on 12 May and completed ten days later. Bowie recorded his vocal for the title track on the final day.
The music was largely arranged by Ronson and Visconti. Ronson used the sessions to learn about many production and arrangement techniques from Visconti. Although Bowie is officially credited as the composer of all music on The Man Who Sold the World, the author Peter Doggett quoted Visconti as saying that "the songs were written by all four of us. We'd jam in a basement, and Bowie would just say whether he liked them or not." In Doggett's narrative, "The band (sometimes with Bowie contributing guitar, sometimes not) would record an instrumental track, which might or might not be based upon an original Bowie idea. Then, at the last possible moment, Bowie would reluctantly uncurl himself from the sofa on which he was lounging with his wife, and dash off a set of lyrics." Conversely, Bowie said in 1998, "I really did object to the impression that I did not write the songs on The Man Who Sold the World. You only have to check out the chord changes. No-one writes chord changes like that.
The Man Who Sold the World was a departure from the largely acoustic and folk rock sound of Space Oddity. According to the music critic Greg Kot, it marked Bowie's change of direction into hard rock. Much of the material has a distinct heavy metal edge that distinguishes it from Bowie's other releases. Like the music, the lyrics are significantly darker than its predecessor. According to Doggett, they contain numerous themes that Bowie would continue to explore throughout the rest of the 1970s decade, including "madness, alienation, violence, confusion of identity, power, darkness and sexual possession". The lyrics have also been seen as reflecting the influence of such figures as Aleister Crowley, Franz Kafka and Friedrich Nietzsche. Since Bowie wrote most of the lyrics at the last minute, O'Leary argues that The Man Who Sold the World is a more "coherent" concept album than Ziggy Stardust (1972) and Diamond Dogs (1974). He continues, saying that the songs "mirror and answer each other", sharing similar themes and imagery.
The opening track, "The Width of a Circle", was an eight-minute epic that delves into progressive rock. Originally debuted in February 1970 at a BBC session, the lyrics referenced the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran and in the song's second half, the narrator has a sexual encounter with God in the devil's lair. The lyrics of "All the Madmen" were inspired by Bowie's half-brother Terry Burns and reflect the theme of institutionalised madness. The song contains a recorder part that creates an atmosphere, which Buckley describes as "childlike dementia". For "Black Country Rock", Bowie had a small portion of the melody and four quickly-written lines that he gave to Ronson and Visconti, who expanded upon them to create the song. A blues rock and hard rock song, Bowie impersonates Marc Bolan in his vocal performance. "After All" is musically different from the rest of The Man Who Sold the World, being more akin to folk rock than hard rock. Featuring an "oh, by jingo" chant that is reminiscent of music hall numbers, the lyrics follow a group of innocent children who have not experienced the corruptions of adulthood.
The second part opened with "Running Gun Blues" the lyrics discuss gun-toting assassins and Vietnam War commentary, pecifically the Mỹ Lai massacre of 1968. Although the lyrics reflected the themes of Space Oddity, the music reflected the predominant hard rock style of The Man Who Sold the World and points to Bowie's future musical direction. Similar to the previous track, "Saviour Machine" is rooted in blues rock and hard rock. The lyrics explored the concept of computers overtaking the human race; Bowie's metallic-like vocal performance enhances the scenario. Like the majority of the tracks, "She Shook Me Cold" was mostly created by Ronson, Visconti and Woodmansey without Bowie's input. Spitz compared the song's blues style to Led Zeppelin, The lyrics explore a sexual conquest similar to "You Shook Me" (then-recently covered by Jeff Beck) and Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain".
The Man Who Sold the World was originally better received by music critics in the US than in the UK. Nevertheless, it was a commercial failure in both countries; the 1972 reissue managed to chart in both the US and the UK. Retrospectively, the album has been praised by critics for the band's performance and the unsettling nature of its music and lyrics, being considered by many to be the start of Bowie's "classic period". It has since been reissued multiple times and was remixed in 2020, under its original title Metrobolist, for its 50th anniversary.
None of the songs from the album were released as singles at the time, although a promo version of "All the Madmen" was issued in the US in 1970. Mercury released "All the Madmen" as a single, with Space Oddity's "Janine" on the B-side, but withdrew it. The same song appeared in Eastern Europe during 1973, as did "The Width of a Circle". "Black Country Rock" was released as the B-side of "Holy Holy" in the UK in January 1971, shortly before the release of The Man Who Sold the World. The title track appeared as the B-side of both the US single release of "Space Oddity" in 1972 and the UK release of "Life on Mars?" in 1973.
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