David Bowie – Blackstar
The Scene
It’s taken a long time to get around to this, it’s been a difficult task. Despite arriving to plenty of applause it’s pretty much 100% that I wouldn’t have bothered writing about the record had it not been for the events that followed. Specifically that one event when the man we knew as Bowie left us for good, called back to his home planet on some groovy plane of existence that only he seemed tuned in to. People like that don’t really die. Maybe. I don’t really know.
Initially I figured I had to write about it. It was too incredible a sentiment for someone to turn his own death into something creative like this, the secrecy of the making of it, the haunting videos and the cryptic lyricism. That is as generous as a musician can be right there. But as I sat down to write it I never got started. Not for a few weeks anyway. It was too heavy an album to get a proper read on, not to mention that it didn’t seem right not to touch on the rest of the man’s legacy, and I started trying to work out some compromise. Like a Top Ten Bowie Songs, which I genuinely came close to doing. Write about what’s great about the tunes and hopefully come up with some clever philosophical musings in the process. For the record, it’d go like this (in no particular order):
- Heroes
- Modern Love
- Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide
- Golden Years
- The Man Who Sold the World
- Changes
- Rebel Rebel
- Starman
- Suffragette City
- Space Oddity
But then I thought that sounded too Buzzfeedy, not to mention that the list would probably change dramatically in the time it took to write it. So I did the album instead.
I wished I’d heard ‘Blackstar’ in the two days after it was released while its creator still stood among us. As it was, I didn’t hear it until a few days after he died and so I’m never gonna be able to listen to it without the shadow of circumstance that surrounds it. But it seems that was intentional. Bowie knew he was dying and he kept it from the world, leaving us this final missive as a message of farewell. So long, Bowie. So long.
The Songs
- Blackstar – Ten minutes on the opening opus. Shaky enchanted vocals, eerie strings and jazzily frantic drumming all mashing together. There’s a gorgeous clearing in the middle giving way to the Blackstar musings. “I’m a Black Star, I’m a Black Star…”
- ‘Tis A Pity She Was A Whore – Driving drums and freewheeling saxophones add a real urgency to this one, which is sung in that old glorious Starman/London accent that is so often imitated. The track’s a riot, the song’s a celebration.
- Lazarus – The one they kept sampling on the news. Slower and mournful, probably the album’s centrepiece in that regard. “Look up here, I’m in heaven.” The way the bass weaves around the drums is pretty superb.
- Sue (Or In a Season of Crime) – Re-recorded from the ‘Nothing Has Changed’ version (same deal with ‘Tis A Pity). Those two are based on a John Ford play from the 1600s, this one’s very different to the original. Very anguished and unsettling. Oh, folly Sue.
- Girl Loves Me – Starting with some borderline-nonsensical chat, more on that later, this one rides a groove on that artillery onslaught percussion. Couldn’t tell ya where Monday went, though. Only that Bowie died on a Sunday.
- Dollar Days – Piano based, much more traditional than the last few tracks although it still boasts some swelling strings. The sax takes over in the second half to dramatic effect.
- I Can’t Give Everything Away – It. The final offering. Borderline electronic beats and a mournful harmonica. No matter how much he has given in a life lived in the public eye, there were some things he just had to keep to himself. Like his illness. Like his final days.
The Vibe
One thing I have to diffuse a little, the more I’ve listened to this record the more I’ve come to think it isn’t strictly about his death and dying. There are songs that touch on that and it is definitely a theme, but then others go in different directions.
Blackstar (which is actually not the real name, the real name is that Blackstar symbol) was sold in the wake of Bowie’s death as a full-stop album. This was deliberately the final output which was such an incredible thing to comprehend. First that an artist could be so generous as to offer this last letter of farewell and then also the timing of the whole thing which meant that for most people (Este Wildcard included) it was heard as the voice of a ghost. This isn’t exactly unprecedented but it’s hardly common. Last albums tend to be scrapped together things, unfinished and unfocussed, but then Bowie had the advantage/horrific knowledge that this was coming. May we all be so courageous and creative ‘til the end.
As much than anything, Blackstar seems to be fixated on his legacy. There are shouts to various points in his career, from the dead astronaut in the Blackstar vid to the New York mention in Lazarus and the entirety of Dollar Days. He’s looking for one last brain twister, to pull one last fast one over the musical press and an industry that loves to put things in simply labelled boxes. But Bowie always rebelled against category.
So it’s not a shock that this album sees him shedding skin once more, a final reinvention. Not as a jazz singer as people wrote at first – oh it’s got saxophone and funny rhythms, must be jazz! – but as something hard to define. There’s no character here, if there is it’s himself. Bowie as his most audacious creation yet… himself. That’s actually quite frightening in a strange way. The artistic irony doesn’t seem so pervasive. It’s been said that this is the least ‘pop’ album that he’s ever made and while that’s a debatable claim (some of that drum and bass stuff, man…) it’s an insightful one all the same. There’s no thought of sugaring or pandering here. Blackstar is heavy. Blackstar is uncompromising. Blackstar is his first ever number one album in America. In fact at the time of writing he’s tying an Elvis Presley record with 12 simultaneous top 40 albums. Elvis, who shares a birthday with Bowie, also set that mark in the weeks after his death.
Oh, and that nonsensical stuff in Girl Loves Me? That’s the famous dialect of Nadsat, from the 1962 novel ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess – later made into a film by Stanley Kubrick. Apparently it was one of Bowie’s favourite books, which ain’t a shocker. I’d imagine he was a big fan of the likes of 1984 and On The Road as well, and as it happens I’d be right.
e.g. “You viddy at the cheena/Choodessny with the red rot” means “You look at the woman/Wonderful with the red mouth”. There’s plenty more of that, not all of it is in Clockwork talk, a lot of it is other British slang.
The Music
This is not an album with any easy reference points. Atypical percussive rhythms and fluttering saxophone solos dragging the songs into the sky like a thousand balloons tied a-hold. Guitars are piercing, string arrangements are warping. Experimental would be a good word. Avant-garde is another. Apparently Kendrick Lamar’s genre-exploding hip hop revelations in To Pimp A Butterfly were a major influence. That’s a hell of a thing to read.
There are tracks where the instrumentation hits like shrapnel. There are others where he seems to be winking to the listener, bringing them in on the joke for once. Beginning with the near-ten minute long title track which begins with a slightly eastern-sounding bed that never quite lets you relax. Bowie’s voice is ethereal and wobbly. The beat seems to be playing to a different tune – a pretty jazzy trend actually. But midway through the sun peeks through the clouds as the song almost cinematically shifts into this echoing mediation.
“I can’t answer why/Just go with me/I’ma take you home.
Take your passport and shoes/And your sedatives, boo
You’re a flash in the pan/I’m the Great I Am.”
It’s like the voice of God calling, all the while Bowie sings his Black Star refrain in response.
You can actually hear him breathing very distinctly at the start of ‘Tis A Pity, which after the funereal ritualising of the first track, seems pretty creepy. But then in he comes with that unique voice of his, singing "Man, she punched me like a dude", teasing us with the gender shuffling once more and it’s enough to make you wanna dance like ever before.
In a similar way, you can hear him unfolding the sheet music or whatever at the beginning of Dollar Days. That song goes in a more traditional direction with piano and strummed acoustic guitars. It’s almost a strip back after the avant-garde of the first two thirds of this thing, a simplifying of things before the end that continues into the final track.
Oh, that final track. I think it might be my favourite of the lot, it’s definitely the one that’s stuck with me the most. It might be the most bare and expose that Bowie has ever let himself be on record and when he starts singing about his career in the past tense, see the final entry in my revelations below, it’s enough to make you wanna cry. Or at least chase this listening with Labyrinth or Station to Station or something.
By the way, Donny McCaslin’s saxophone might be the MVP of this record (as far as the band goes). Followed closely by Mark Guiliana and his drumming.
Revelations
“Something happened on the day he died, Spirit roe a meter and stepped aside. Somebody else took his place and bravely cried: I’m a Black Star.”
Just a reminder that this album was released on Bowie’s 69th birthday.
Things that Bowie is:
- A Black Star.
- A star’s star.
Things that he is not:
- A gangster.
- A film star.
- A pop star.
- A Marvel star.
- A white star.
- A porn star.
- A wandering star.
This Elvis/Bowie connection is pretty interesting as far as the album title goes.
“If Vorticists wrote Rock Music it might have sounded like this.” – Bowie on his original version of ‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore.
“Look up here, I'm in heaven. I've got scars that can't be seen. I've got drama, can't be stolen. Everybody knows me now.”
“By the time I got to New York I was living like a king. There I used up all my money. I was looking for your ass.”
If you’re keen, and why not, the artwork for this album has been released for public consumption and use by the artist Jonathan Barnbrook:
“If I'll never see the English evergreens I’m running to. It’s nothing to me. It’s nothing to see”
Curse those Oligarchs with their foaming mouths. The music industry must be full of them.
“Don’t believe for just one second I’m forgetting you”
The imagery in the videos for these ones are crazy. So wild with symbolism and nods and winks. Especially the Blackstar vid, which feels like David Lynch might’ve made it. Instead it was Breaking Bad alum Johan Renck, who also directed The Last Panthers show, which used that song as a theme tune.
“Seeing more and feeling less
Saying no but meaning yes
This is all I ever meant
That's the message that I sent”
Finale
I wonder how this album would’ve been received were it not for the death it foretold. I know that it was in part about all that, so it’s hard to divorce the two, but there’s no way it sells as well as it has if people weren’t buying it to help their grieving. Initial reviews were all pretty positive but, man, this is one radical record. So in that regard it’s great to see people embracing something that they may not otherwise have bothered with, one last wonderful gift from a man who spent his life breaking boundaries. Like challenging MTV on their racial bias in the 80s for one.
There’s not really a final word to be said on this. It’s a rare album that speaks for itself in entirety. You’ve probably already heard it - go listen to it again. Put it loud on the headphones late at night and have a drink to Ziggy Stardust, to the Thin White Duke, to Major Tom, to Aladdin Sane, to Jareth the Goblin King and to the one they called Davie Bowie.
He couldn’t give it all away but he gave more than enough.