The new album, “Blackstar,” came out on Bowie’s 69th birthday. I was elated. But I hadn’t even had the chance to go to the record store to buy it before the news of his death, two days later. It was heartbreaking. Just pushing the play button felt so… final.
It was like losing a friend or a hero, and this one hero is someone who inspired many, like myself, to express the person on the inside, and not be constrained by ideas of gender or genre or fashion. I had the overwhelming sense that there had to be something in this last new album that would be some final piece of wisdom from our hero. Maybe that’s a lot to ask of a man, even one that has 23 albums that made it to the charts.
On “Blackstar,” Bowie is doing all the things he loves: Wailing saxophones, classic Motown back-up vocals, slamming funk basslines and the occasional random vintage guitar noise intermittently mixed with moments of stark simplicity. But there is never the pretense of genre, unless David Bowie is his own genre.
Bowie is in a dialogue with himself and his inspirations. Several of the sets from the “Blackstar” video remind one of “Labyrinth,” the 1986 movie that is how most millennials were introduced to Bowie, in his role as the singing goblin king. The album even has a few lines of what sound like words in the imaginary Nadsat language from “A Clockwork Orange.” If Bowie is a genre, it’s somewhere between rock and funk and high-end science fictions films.
The track “Lazarus” is the one everyone says is Bowie coming to terms with his death. But with lyrics like “look up here. I’m in heaven” and “you know I’ll be free. Just like that bluebird. Ain’t that just like me?,” it seems more like the song is written to console his loved ones than himself. Tony Visconti, the legendary producer who oversaw the Blackstar sessions, said the album was planned as a farewell gift to fans.
The song “Sue” is reminiscent of late 90s Bowie, when his 1997 album, “Earthling,” was one of the most listenable pieces of electronic on the radio, and Bowie started collaborating with industrial star, Trent Reznor.
Reznor recently spoke to Rolling Stone about Bowie’s death.
“It feels like the loss of a mentor, fatherly figure, someone looking out for you, reminding you that in a world where the bar keeps seeming to be lower, where stupidity has got a foothold, there is room for excellence and uncompromising vision,” Reznor said.
“Girl Loves Me” is hard to compare to other Bowie. Something about the combination of electronic sounds and more traditional rock instruments is reminiscent of 2000s Bowie, especially the album “Hours.” That album got less attention than other Bowie releases, prompting the famous line from Adult Swim’s “The Venture Bros” when the henchman finally meet David Bowie: “And may I say, Hours was a totally underrated album.”
“Blackstar” is an excellent, if not short album. The question was never whether or not it would be good; it’s whether or not it holds up to the legacy Bowie has made for himself. Only time will give us that insight.
As for finding final wisdom from our hero, perhaps it is this: Nothing is final. The seven-song album does not include five of the songs that Bowie recorded for it just before his death. Those may be available in a deluxe edition next year.