Where Are We Now?

The Next Day, 2013

Ten years on from the release of Reality, following a decade of significant speculation as to Bowie’s state of health, Where Are We Now? arrived into an unsuspecting world on his 66th birthday, to universal acclaim. Supported by an extraordinary promotional video featuring the wife of its director Tony Oursler – artist Jacqueline Humphries – and Bowie as conjoined puppets, it’s a composition loaded with backwardglancing melancholia. Heavy with nostalgia, specifically for 70s Berlin, Oursler’s promo is cut with vintage clips of the divided city Bowie briefly called home from ’76. Where Are We Now? confirms Bowie’s lifelong ability to deliver the heartbreakingly brilliant.