Bowie releases song as he turns 66

LONDON: British singer David Bowie released his first new song in nearly a decade yesterday in a surprise launch coinciding with his 66th birthday.

Where Are We Now?, produced by long-term collaborator Tony Visconti, is a melancholic look back to the time Bowie spent in Berlin in the 1970s with an accompanying video featuring black-and-white footage of the city.

The song, available on iTunes and free to view on his re-launched website, was recorded in New York and will be followed by Bowie’s first studio album since 2003, The Next Day, due out in Australia on March 8 and the US on March 12.

Fans welcomed the return of one of pop music’s most gifted and enigmatic figures, and the hashtags #Bowie and #DavidBowie were trending on Twitter following the announcement.

Early reaction from the public was mixed, but critics were largely impressed. “Plenty of veteran musicians are masters of the cunning trick of staying away just long enough for every comeback to be hailed as a return to form, regardless of its true quality,” wrote David Smyth of London’s Evening Standard.

“Bowie’s new song is free of such bluster – it’s gentle, elegiac and stunningly beautiful.”

The artwork for the album appears to be based on that used on Heroes, Bowie’s acclaimed 1977 record that was the second album in his so-called “Berlin Trilogy”.

The typically understated associations with the singer’s past have prompted the music press to speculate that he may be returning to the German cycle. As yet there is no word on whether Bowie will tour to support the album, or on the identity of the mysterious woman whose face appears in the new video.

Bowie’s label, Columbia Record, said the new song was a “treasure”. – Reuters