THE MAN WHO SANG THE WORLD
A stack of albums, 111 singles, five no. 1s.... Bowie’s output was as prolific as his cover art was inventive.... here are the records that changed music
Does David Bowie’s final album have a hidden meaning? We can’t be sure, writes Tim de Lisle, but four of the tracks very much look like the chronicle of a death foretold...
BLACKSTAR
The title track, a ten-minute epic, is steeped in death. ‘On the day of execution,’ Bowie intones, ‘only women kneel and smile.’ Donny McCaslin, the saxophonist on the album, said Bowie had told him the song was about IS, although two other contributors demurred. The track moves on to a resurrection of sorts: ‘Something happened on the day he died/ Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside.’ Black Star is the name of a song by Elvis Presley, which goes: ‘When a man sees his black star, he knows his time has come.’
DOLLAR DAYS
A wistful number, sung softly. ‘If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to,’ Bowie declares, ‘it’s nothing to me.’ The chorus begins: ‘I’m dying to… fool them all again and again.’ Does he mean us?
LAZARUS
Title track of the musical written by Bowie and Dubliner Enda Walsh, which opened off Broadway last month. ‘Look up here,’ Bowie sings, ‘I’m in heaven. I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.’ It may be the morphine: ‘I’m so high, it makes my brain whirl.’ In the video, the camera finds Bowie in a hospital bed, clutching the sheet in fear. He’s joined by a second Bowie, healthier but hardly reassuring – he’s agitated, frantically taking notes. Not since Johnny Cash’s Hurt has a pop video been so majestically disturbing.
I CAN’T GIVE EVERYTHING AWAY
The final song in this seven-track album is a shimmering elegy. ‘I know something’s very wrong,’ Bowie murmurs. The refrain is so gorgeous that all seems well, but then he sings, ‘Seeing more but feeling less/ Saying no but meaning yes/ This is all I ever meant/ That’s the message that I sent.’ He remains elusive to the end, which is just as it should be.