David Bowie's Blackstar

Revisiting Bowie's final album on the tenth anniversary of its release

A decade has now passed since the release of Blackstar, which means that David Bowie is ten years gone. The two events are intertwined due to fate: Bowie died two days after the album’s unveiling, a departure that forever framed it as a farewell.

In the days immediately following Bowie’s death his longtime producer Tony Visconti helped fuel this narrative, telling Rolling Stone that he told Bowie ‘You canny bastard. You’re writing a farewell album.” The singer only laughed at his friend, a response that lends credence to the notion that the album was intended as a parting note. That’s not quite true. Bowie had designs on a sequel to Blackstar and was working on The Spectator, a musical set in 18th Century London. Deep in the throes of cancer, he remained busy creating art.

Certainly, Blackstar is littered with apparent allusions to mortality, culminating with “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” where Bowie arrives at an acceptance of his own transience. It’s one of the sweeter moments on a record that pointedly doesn’t lack humor: with its tart melody, ominous march and refrain of “where the fuck did Monday go?,” “Girl Loves Me” lightens the mood. Then again, even the setpieces of “Blackstar” and “Lazarus” don’t play as descents into darkness to my ears. The skittering tempos, minor-key churn, eerie harmonies and fleeting dissonance don’t convey impending gloom, they crackle with adventure.

Whenever I play Blackstar, which I do every so often, I reconnect to my initial reaction, my excitement at hearing something unexpected. The album is so dense, it often will kick up a surprise, whether it’s an instrumental phrase floating out of the mix or a nuance in Bowie’s vocal delivery. The way the music heightens or lightens the lyrics makes Blackstar seem alive: it’s not a morbid meditation, it’s playful as it is profound.

Those are qualities that wouldn’t have diminished even if Bowie managed to record another album in its wake. The 2017 release of the No Plan EP buttresses this argument. Its three Blackstar-era outtakes, all versions of songs featured in the Lazarus musical, are strong songs that benefit greatly from his imaginative, dextrous band, yet they don’t feel as contemplative or as deep as the finished album. Similarly, the original versions of “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” and “’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore,” both released in conjunction with the 2014 compilation Nothing Has Changed, feel formative in these initial drafts, lacking the nocturnal grace and insistence that made them crucial parts of Blackstar.

When I first heard Blackstar in advance of its release, I registered some mild internal disappointment that the nine-song album recycled two songs from 2014. The distance of a decade has erased these distinctions as a footnote, not too dissimilar from the fact that Bowie felt compelled to trim its title track to fit the dictates of the iTunes download store. Back then, if a song spilled over ten minutes, users couldn’t purchase it as an individual track, so he chopped a section out of the recording so it clocked in at a tidy 9:58. So far, the original unedited version of “Blackstar” has yet to emerge—it did not appear on last year’s weighty I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002-2016), the last installment in Parlophone’s extensive chronological Bowie box sets—and while it’d be interesting to hear, it’s not needed. The version that ushers in Blackstar feels finished, the overture to an album that retains a sense of wonder and urgency even as it fades into history.

Further reading:

Bowie expert Chris O’Leary has a piece commemorating the 10th anniversary of Blackstar.

Alfred Soto explores the state Bowie’s legacy in 2026.

Chris DeVille on the album’s 10th anniversary. His anecdote of waking up to the news of Bowie’s death mirrors my confusion that morning.