He could wrong foot us to the last. ‘Blackstar’, an album that seemingly hinted at infinite future possibilities, was in fact a long goodbye. David Bowie went out as he came in: unique, fearless and able to speak to each of us as though we were the ones who really mattered.
There was a peculiar comfort in Bowie as an artist and individual. The knowledge that we, the many who go about our day to day in anonymity, were moving in the same sphere as someone whose existence was inextricably linked with creativity and bending the old ways to a ceaselessly inventive will made everything seem a little more balanced.
Bowie wrote pop songs that will last forever and created characters who changed what it meant to be an outsider. His life became a kaleidoscope for us to view our concrete streets through. He paved the way forward for thousands of artists in a number of mediums, yet none of them could truly claim to sound or look or act anything like him. No-one could.
He dismantled gender norms, celebrated individuality and broke rules. His presence was enough to help plant seeds for punk in New York and LA. His face, peering from a poster on a suburban bedroom wall, emboldened the kid who felt different. Bowie was a nudge towards the spotlight.
He lived a life punctuated by alarming bursts of creative power, but his influence was not confined to any one group, clique or circle. Lou Reed and Iggy Pop loved him. So did Trent Reznor and Kurt Cobain. So did Kendrick Lamar, whose ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ album made a recent mark on Bowie, and Kanye West. So did you and I. We all existed outside of him. He had no equals. He was a lightning rod.
The news of his death has reframed ‘Blackstar’ at an almost impossibly early point. What initially appeared as a vital, exciting new chapter has become a towering send off. Its lyrics already have new meaning, their many puzzles and asides a little plainer in the sad light of a Bowie-less world. As an album it’s one of his best in the last two decades. As a full stop, it’s as strange and confounding as we might have hoped (or feared) his last statement to be.
It’s a shapeshifter. It’s another record on which he experimented with synths and electronic beats. On Sue (Or In A Season of Crime) we are sucked into an ominous jazz whirlpool. But as a collection it’s also remarkably melodic and almost old fashioned.
When (the now heartbreakingly prophetic: ‘Look up here, I'm in Heaven!’) Lazarus takes us to New York, we are reminded of ‘Hunky Dory’ and its magical constructions. The title track, a 10 minute odyssey accompanied by a surreal visual feast, is able to conjure the same worn-in joy out of thin air as its rhythmic chants are shoved aside for just a moment. There is also a heavy reliance on saxophone, an instrument Bowie always seemed to find new uses for, to add texture.
‘Blackstar’ is punctuated by references to death, clinics, nurses and heaven that we allowed to wash over us on first listen, content in the knowledge that Bowie was, or at least appeared to be, immortal. “I'm dying to push their backs against the grain and fool them all again and again,” runs Dollar Days.
This is a last act of winking subterfuge, but also an emotional, vivid album. It’s a work of staggering discipline and imagination and the final chapter in one of the finest bodies of work assembled by any artist.
“Oh, I'll be free. Just like that bluebird. Oh, I'll be free. Ain't that just like me?”
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