David Bowie
Blackstar

Album Release Date: January 8th, 2016

Blackstar (simply stylized as ✭), was recorded in secrecy during the last year or so of David Bowie's life, amidst his battle with cancer. It was released on his 69th birthday, and he died two days later. When juxtaposed with the content of the album, these real life details surrounding its conception, production, and release make for a stunning, thought-provoking final work. Despite his iconic celebrity status, Bowie managed to keep his illness and the album private, and news of his death shocked the world, myself included.

In astronomy, a black star is a theoretical construct related to a black hole. A literally cosmic phenomenon, a black star is created when matter compresses at a significant rate, creating unlimited vacuum energy that can stop gravitational collapse or lead to an infinite collapse time. A black star appears very dark, almost exactly like a black hole, because all light produced is drawn back to the star.

The astronomical definition is more complex than I've just stated, but given Bowie's disintegrating health during the writing and recording of Blackstar, entitling his last album as such is an appropriate closing metaphor for his life and work. As a man of monumental influence on modern music genres he not only gave off light, but also drew it towards him—just as with a black star in outerspace, all light produced is drawn back to the star. As his physical body was dying, his spirit was simultaneously flourishing, putting out energy as he created this last musical work—further preserving his creative vision, his life, himself, through art. And the art comments on, among other things, this very state of synchronous deterioration and creation, resulting in an unlimited energy that can decrease the rate of collapse to an infinite collapse time. Bowie comparing himself to a black star, then, in this, his swan song, his parting gift to fans, is a potent analogy saying that he will live forever through song even as his body collapses once and for all.

Astronomical ideas are not new in Bowie's work. He first catapulted to superstardom with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), a concept album about a fictional rock star who acts as a messenger for extraterrestrial beings. His first Top 5 hit was the song "Space Oddity" (1969) about a fictional astronaut, and he created many other outer space-themed works, including starring in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which he played an alien. So the astronomy-based title and themes of his concluding work, Blackstar, serve as a fitting elegy to the life and career of a fascinating artist. In a compelling addendum to David Bowie's life, a new planet was discovered on the far reaches of our solar system just one week after his death.

✭

The style of the album overall is a combination of electronic jazz and alternative rock, with mostly slow, off-kilter grooves and cryptic, metaphorical lyrics that conjure dark and eerie imagery. At 7 tracks, none of which are shorter than 4½ minutes, the total work comes in at 41 minutes of play time—a full album's worth of material by usual standards. But the sparse number of tracks gives Blackstar an austere quality, made without the usual comforts or luxuries to spare since Bowie indeed created the work knowing that his days on Earth were numbered.

Despite occasionally sounding like experimental, free-form, avant-garde jazz, the album nonetheless feels calculated, finely tuned, and carefully constructed. It opens with "Blackstar", the 10-minute-long title track, in which Bowie sings "Something happened on the day he died / Spirit rose a meter and stepped aside / Somebody else took his place and bravely cried: I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar". The song, and whole album, abounds with themes of death, rebirth, and Bowie's own self-reflection about his life and place in the world as an artist. He continues on with the refrain "I'm a blackstar / I'm not a filmstar / I'm a blackstar / I'm not a popstar / I'm a blackstar".  

The three official videos produced and released with the album are effective visual counterparts to the music and intriguing works of art in their own right. The "Blackstar" video plays as a disturbing and heavily allegorical short art film. It opens with the image of an astronaut in a spacesuit, lying on an alien planet. A black star hangs in the night sky overhead. A woman with a long tail protruding out from under the back of her dress walks up to the astronaut and opens his face shield to reveal a decayed skull within, adorned with jewels and gemstones. This sequence is interspersed with shots of Bowie singing, a faded bandage wrapped around his head as a blindfold, with small black buttons sewn on in place of his eyes. The woman carries the bejewelled astronaut skull, encased in a glass box, through a desolate city. In a dingy room behind where Bowie sings, three people stand, convulsing in unison. Elsewhere, a dozen or so women are seen facing each other in a circle, twitching in similar fashion with heads down, before walking off into the darkness in single file. The astronaut's headless skeleton floats in space towards the black star.

Another video was produced for "I Can't Give Everything Away", the album's last song. It has very few lyrics, repeated throughout: "I know something is very wrong / The pulse returns the prodigal sons / The blackout hearts, the flowered news / With skull designs upon my shoes / I can't give everything, I can't give everything away / Seeing more and feeling less / Saying no but meaning yes / This is all I ever meant / That's the message I sent / I can't give everything, I can't give everything away". The video is very different from that of "Blackstar"; a series of simple animated sequences, mostly stars and kaleidoscopic images interspersed with excerpts of the song's printed lyrics. It's black-and-white throughout until about the last minute when it turns to full colour, ending with a cartoon spaceman floating into space through a multicoloured tunnel of stars reminiscent of the wormhole sequence in the Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. And it's framed with rounded edges and stylized as grainy footage, as if screened with an old-fashioned film projector as a circa 1950s-'60s primitive laser light show.

When I first watched the video for "Lazarus" it made my skin crawl and tears come to my eyes. Its imagery and the song's lyrics have resounding impact when considered in the context that Bowie wrote and recorded the entire album while he was sick and facing his own impending death. Lazarus is a character from the bible who rose from the dead. The video features numerous hauntingly symbolic images; it starts with a shot of an old wardrobe, then shows Bowie wearing the same bandage mask with the black button eyes that he wears in the "Blackstar" video, lying on his deathbed in what appears to be a hospital room, or a cinematic version of an old-fashioned insane asylum. He levitates off of the bed, then back down, as he sings. Later, Bowie sits unmasked at a desk, writing furiously on a scrap of paper while displaying theatrically embellished facial expressions alternately showing frustration and inspiration. At the end he stands up, backs into the wardrobe, and closes the door. The video and song augment each other, as "Lazarus" contains lyrics related to dying, such as: "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 / Look up here, man, I'm in danger / I've got nothing left to lose / I'm so high it makes my brain whirl / Dropped my cell phone down below... / This way or no way, you know I'll be free / Just like that bluebird / Now ain't that just like me".

The album has an aural and thematic cohesion that characterizes it as a single work in which each track is a separate movement, as with classical orchestral pieces, united into a whole. And as such "Blackstar" the song resonates as a powerful first movement to Blackstar the album—a profound coda to Bowie's life and work. Similarly, the lyrics and video for "Lazarus" elevate the album overall to a work equalling something greater than its own content, with David Bowie reflecting on his life's work, his status as a celebrity and artist, as it's all winding down due to his illness and eventual death. It's a chillingly metafictional, creative exploration of the art-to-life and life-to-art relationship of a captivating artist.

"Oh, I'll be free / Just like that bluebird / Oh, I'll be free / Ain't that just like me."

✭

• Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
February 3rd, 2016