David Bowie’s final album isn’t easy listening.
The album, Bowie’s final full-length, was released shortly before his death, and since then has become his first record to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 in America.
At first, I couldn’t quite grasp it. I didn’t make it past the first track. Bowie’s music has often been too strange for my taste, feeling almost artificial in its apparent need to defy convention. But when I heard of Bowie’s passing, two days after Blackstar’s release, I decided to give it another shot.
The album is beautiful.
The eponymous first song “Blackstar” is a vast and cacophonous soundscape that clocks in at almost 10 minutes. It’s dense, it’s ominous, and it’s classic Bowie. Rather, it is what people perceive as Bowie. The fog fades as the album progresses, the spotlight dims, and the listener is introduced to a vulnerability Bowie has rarely revealed.
By the third song, “Lazarus,” it is clear that Bowie was fully aware of his mortality during the recording process. From that point on, it’s as if he’s speaking from the grave, retreating deeper and deeper into his soul as he recalls fleeting memories and ponders what might have been.
Blackstar closes with a ballad of stunning sincerity, in which Bowie seems to tell listeners he gave them all he could.
The album, which was initially received by fans as an excitingly confusing work, is revealed in context to be a reflection of life from the threshold of death. It has incredible focus, yet it brims with mystery. There will always be something to find among its forest of cryptic lyrics and frolicking saxophone.
Above all, Blackstar represents the impossibly rare instance where an artist manages to write the final chapter of their story.
It is a fitting farewell.
