FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
David Bowie – Blackstar
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IN this feature…
I am looking back at some of the most important and popular albums of the decade; those that you need to own on vinyl and experience in their finest state. David Bowie’s Blackstar is an especially lovely thing on vinyl. It’s cover, supposedly, when left out in the sun reveals something rather captivating. I am not sure whether it is true but, if you do get the vinyl and leave it until things warm up, you can find out for yourself. The tragedy of Blackstar is that it was revealed to the world only two days before Bowie died – Blackstar came out on 8th January, 2016; Bowie died on the 10th. There was massive delight Bowie had released his twenty-fifth studio album. In terms of Bowie’s best decades, we can all agree the 1970s was his regency. He released some great albums in the 1980s and 1990s, but it wasn’t until the 2010s that he started to regain the sort of form he exhibited back in the ‘70s. 2013’s The Next Day was hugely well-received, and we were looking forward to many more classic albums from Bowie. Few knew what we would hear in the news two days after one of David Bowie’s best albums came out – that the master had succumbed to cancer aged sixty-nine. We are still feeling the reverberations of Bowie’s passing, almost four years to the day! When you listen to Blackstar, one can hear mentions of death and the fact that this creator would not be in the world for too much longer.
Before Bowie’s death, one assessed the songs in a different way; when we heard the terrible news, the tracks took on new meaning and weight. The album was largely recorded in secret – perhaps so that people were unaware Bowie was dying -, at The Magic Shop and Worldwide Studios in New York City alongside Tony Visconti – Bowie’s friend and long-time producer. In terms of genre and sound, Blackstar is a lot more Jazz-infused than a lot of Bowie albums; featuring musicians such as saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his quintet. It is heart-breaking Bowie was living with liver cancer when he was recording the album. Although his voice was more strained and weaker than we are used to, I think the raw emotion he exudes on every number is more potent and memorable than if his voice was stronger and not ailed. This album was a parting gift to fans; Bowie knew he would soon die and, as such, left us with a fantastic gift. If the album had been a little underwhelming, Blackstar still would have topped the charts and have sold in the shed-loads. On the contrary: Blackstar is a masterpiece and one of the best albums of the 2010s. I am not sure where Bowie fans would place Blackstar in their lists but, to me, it deserves to be very high up the top-ten – maybe in the best five of his career, no less! The album topped the chart in many countries and, critically, scooped four and five-star reviews across the board. The album was a massive commercial success and, even now, it sounds cosmic, genius and so different to anything in the world.
I will continue with the positives soon but, when we think about the timing of Blackstar and Bowie’s death, the fact he did not get to see how the album was received is so sad. Bowie would have been too ill to read the first batch of reviews one suspects, so would only have received feedback from family and those who worked on the album – I’d like to thing he knew he’d released a special star into the universe and people would fall in love with it. Also, Blackstar marked a new peak for Bowie. If he were alive today, he might well have another album out and he would be looking at the 2020s and seeing where he would head next. It is so tragic that Bowie died so young and at a time when we needed his music more than ever. Regardless, he did create this staggering album that requires fond attention and dedication. It is not an album you can play in the background or turn it low: one needs to crank up the volume and give their all to its incredible lyrics, music and performances. Even though Bowie was very ill, I think his delivery is superb. He is vulnerable and emotional one moment, strong and defiant the next. It is the sound of a man who knows his fate, yet he battles stoically until the very end. Bowie wanted to avoid a Rock sound on Blackstar and, having been inspired after listening to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (2016), Blackstar incorporates Jazz and Art Rock.
Even if you are not a Bowie fan and steeped in his history and evolution, one can appreciate Blackstar as a standalone album. It is such an affecting and compelling record, one cannot deny its brilliance. As I said, Blackstar received intense respect and applause upon its release. Here is what AllMusic wrote:
“Unlike its predecessor, 2013's The Next Day, Blackstar doesn't carry the burden of ushering a new era in Bowie's career. Occasionally, the record contains a nod to his past -- two of its key songs, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore," were even aired in 2014 as a supporting single for the Nothing Has Changed compilation (both are revamped for this album) -- but Bowie and producer Tony Visconti are unconcerned with weaving winking postmodern tapestries; now that they've shaken free their creative cobwebs, they're ready to explore. Certainly, the luxurious ten-minute sprawl of "Blackstar" -- a two-part suite stitched together by string feints and ominous saxophone -- suggests Bowie isn't encumbered with commercial aspirations, but Blackstar neither alienates nor does it wander into uncharted territory. For all its odd twists, the album proceeds logically, unfolding with stately purpose and sustaining a dark, glassy shimmer. It is music for the dead of night but not moments of desolation; it's created for the moment when reflection can't be avoided. Fittingly, the music itself is suspended in time, sometimes recalling the hard urban gloss of '70s prog -- Bowie's work, yes, but also Roxy Music and, especially, the Scott Walker of Nite Flights -- and sometimes evoking the drum'n'bass dabbling of the '90s incarnation of the Thin White Duke, sounds that can still suggest a coming future, but in the context of this album these flourishes are the foundation of a persistent present.
This comfort with the now is the most striking thing about Blackstar: it is the sound of a restless artist feeling utterly at ease not only within his own skin and fate but within his own time. To that end, Bowie recruited saxophonist Donny McCaslin and several of his New York cohorts to provide the instrumentation (and drafted disciple James Murphy to contribute percussion on a pair of cuts), a cast that suggests Blackstar goes a bit farther out than it actually does. Cannily front-loaded with its complicated cuts (songs that were not coincidentally also released as teaser singles), Blackstar starts at the fringe and works its way back toward familiar ground, ending with a trio of pop songs dressed in fancy electronics. This progression brings Blackstar to a close on a contemplative note, a sentiment that when combined with Bowie's passing lends the album a suggestion of finality that's peaceful, not haunting”.
There were some reviewers who, perhaps, were affected by Bowie’s death and focused more on mortality and the tragic rather than the beauty one can find across Blackstar – understandable, I guess, but I wonder whether they would take a different approach if assessing Blackstar in 2019. Here is The Telegraph’s review:
“Only seven tracks and 42 minutes long, Blackstar is impressively hard to place in his back catalogue and feels completely self-contained. It has some of the off-kilter character of his late Seventies Berlin trilogy (Low, Heroes and Lodger) but little of their electronic flavour.
It is shot through with a late-life melancholy that sits intriguingly with the jazzy modulations. Beneath the swooning cinematic rush of Dollar Days beats a gorgeous, bittersweet piano ballad on which Bowie proclaims himself “dying to... fool them all again and again” but the phrase breaks apart until he sounds like he might be singing “I’m dying too.
PHOTO CREDIT: Jimmy King
It is a song that evokes and then dismisses regret. “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to,” Bowie sings, “It’s nothing to me.” On epic closing track, I Can’t Give Everything Away, Bowie sounds like he is grappling with his own mystery: “Saying more and meaning less / Saying no but meaning yes / This is all I ever meant / This is the message that I sent”.
Although, obviously, Bowie could not control the day he died on, there were theories regarding Blackstar’s release and name. Obviously, Bowie knew he would not release another album and that he had to release the album before he died. Many people took to the Internet to look for hidden messages and clues that would reveal whether Blackstar was more than a routine Bowie album – and whether he was peppering songs with illusions to death and passing. The Guardian ran a feature that broke down the album and focused on a few different areas:
“Yes, it’s a name for a cancer lesion, although one usually associated with breast cancer, so its meaning in outer-space terminology is likely to have been far more significant for the Starman. As well as being the name of a “hidden planet” that the apocalyptically inclined think will crash into the Earth (“Guys! He knew it was coming!”) and another name for Saturn (“He won a Saturn acting award once!”), it’s also the term for the transitional state between a collapsed star and a singularity (a state of infinite value) in physics – which makes sense if Bowie is placing himself as the collapsed star, and the singularity the state he will enter after his death.
Blackstar was the first Bowie album not to feature his image on the cover, perhaps because he knew he would die soon. Furthermore, the vinyl release’s black star is die-cut – ie it features his absence. The graphic alphabet on the bottom of the cover is also rumoured to be a cipher alphabet, spelling Bowie, while @mattround on Twitter has an even wilder theory: “Bowie’s final album’s name isn’t just an Elvis reference. The Unicode black star character ★ is U+2605. 26 May is Mick Ronson’s birthday.”
First released as a single in late 2014 – as we know now, after Bowie’s cancer diagnosis – Sue (in a Season Of Crime) features the line: “The clinic called/ The X-ray’s fine/ I brought you home.” The album track Dollar Days (again a nod to Mos Def’s Dollar Day, perhaps) also has a telling lyric: “Don’t believe for just one second I’m forgetting you/ I’m trying to/I’m dying to.” Or “dying too?” The title of the final track, I Can’t Give Everything Away, also now sounds deliberately playful – I’m giving you so many clues, but I’m not telling you the whole story, dammit – and it also samples the harmonica solo from A New Career in a New Town as it kicks. A new career in a new town for Bowie indeed, online, in the stars, everywhere, always”.
We will never know what Bowie could have achieved if he were still alive today, but I know Blackstar was no fluke. Here was a man at the top of his game right until the end. I think Blackstar is one of this decade’s best albums, and every music fan should grab it on vinyl – stream it if you cannot. I listened to the album recently. I was struck by the immediacy of the songs, but also how long they lingered in the memory. It is a masterpiece of an album and one that, of course, is tinged with sadness. Although the great Mr. Bowie is no longer with us, Blackstar means that he…
WILL live on through us all.