David Bowie's Blackstar : a thread

I know Bowie isn't exactly an hht superstar but I wanna do this anyway. Be sure to RT if you like it :)

It's quite well known at this point how music,books,movies etc etc take you to another place. And this album isn't an exception to that,but the place it does take you to is one that not everyone wants to go,and that is the threshold of death.

There's a kind of eerie quality to this album which feels like suspending yourself from your surroundings and just entering whatever plane there might be between life & death, and all you can hear is a man turning the end of his life into an incredibly bold concept album.

The feelings of mortality are most prominent not just in the lyrics but also in the instrumentals,like the horn sections on Lazarus that feels like a jolt of pain to the body. And also the harmonica on the last song,which feels like some kind of ascension.

Coming to the lyrics though,there's just so many different, fascinating approaches to death on this thing. It feels kinda morbid to be this fascinated with someone's unfortunate passing from cancer,but I guess this must be what Bowie intended,to stun the world one last time.

There's a real noisy,chaotic approach to some tracks here which represent some of Bowie's most experimental work to date,but the soft & sombre Dollar Days is by far my favourite track. The last 30 seconds with the guitar are quite overpowering.

The album's genius really does lie in bringing to life the experience of death in a way that I don't think a book, or a movie could. There's so many cryptic references but a lot is left to the imagination (and my own imagination tends to get a little scary sometimes).

I would say overall this is my second favourite album of his behind Ziggy Stardust ; but as a somber,weirdly colorful statement about the nature of life (death included) there's no album like it.

End thread. Like I said before,RT if you enjoyed the thread