It's been a year and a half since the release of David Bowie's final album, Blackstar.
An album that I heard the day it came out. On its release date, I assumed it was just avant garde nonsense that nobody would be able to understand for years. Just two days later, its purpose shown through in the most devastating of ways. Only two days after the release of the album, David Bowie passed away after a two year long battle with cancer that nobody was even aware of except for himself.
With strange allusions to necromancy, funeral planning, and decay, Blackstar is a dark journey, a surprising one, and ultimately a masterpiece.
David Bowie begins the album with the title track, a 10 minute long chant, with saxophones blaring frantically and Bowie explaining very cryptically how he wants his funeral to look.
As the album continues, the strange poetry of it begins to unravel and become more hopeless and beautiful. He moved to New York at the peak of his popularity and rarely looked back. Lyrics from the song Dollar Days explain his urge to go home:
"I’m walking down
It’s nothing to me
It’s nothing to see
If I'll never see the English evergreens I’m running to
It’s nothing to me
It’s nothing to see"
His illness decaying him so badly he can't return to his home country one last time. The album is chocked full of harrowing yet beautiful imagery such as that.
Some strange coincedences appear in the album, too. David Bowie died on a Sunday. In the song Girl Loves Me, he screams "Where the **** did Monday go?" He couldn't have possibly known he'd die on such a perfectly timed day to match those lyrics.
There's just no way this album isn't one of the greatest works of art of all time. To have no meaning and suddenly a tragic event happens, and it makes all the sense in the world.
Have you given David Bowie's final work a listen? Did it shock you in the way it shocked me?
I lost sleep over this album a full week after he died. Ideas and thoughts that continue to race in my head when its name is even brought up are just beyond words. It's frightening, its gorgeous, and it turned the artist's death into a work of art.
It's been a year and a half since the release of David Bowie's final album, Blackstar.
An album that I heard the day it came out. On its release date, I assumed it was just avant garde nonsense that nobody would be able to understand for years. Just two days later, its purpose shown through in the most devastating of ways. Only two days after the release of the album, David Bowie passed away after a two year long battle with cancer that nobody was even aware of except for himself.
With strange allusions to necromancy, funeral planning, and decay, Blackstar is a dark journey, a surprising one, and ultimately a masterpiece.
David Bowie begins the album with the title track, a 10 minute long chant, with saxophones blaring frantically and Bowie explaining very cryptically how he wants his funeral to look.
As the album continues, the strange poetry of it begins to unravel and become more hopeless and beautiful. He moved to New York at the peak of his popularity and rarely looked back. Lyrics from the song Dollar Days explain his urge to go home:
"I’m walking down
It’s nothing to me
It’s nothing to see
If I'll never see the English evergreens I’m running to
It’s nothing to me
It’s nothing to see"
His illness decaying him so badly he can't return to his home country one last time. The album is chocked full of harrowing yet beautiful imagery such as that.
Some strange coincedences appear in the album, too. David Bowie died on a Sunday. In the song Girl Loves Me, he screams "Where the **** did Monday go?" He couldn't have possibly known he'd die on such a perfectly timed day to match those lyrics.
There's just no way this album isn't one of the greatest works of art of all time. To have no meaning and suddenly a tragic event happens, and it makes all the sense in the world.
Have you given David Bowie's final work a listen? Did it shock you in the way it shocked me?
I lost sleep over this album a full week after he died. Ideas and thoughts that continue to race in my head when its name is even brought up are just beyond words. It's frightening, its gorgeous, and it turned the artist's death into a work of art.