Item Marked as Dispatched.. Shipped: Blackstar - David Bowie Vinyl LP.
Phew. Fingers crossed it comes.
So I've just heard Bowie is dead, and I've uploaded Blackstar on Spotify to take in the car with me on the way to work. It's dark, it's a bit wet (like every fucking day), and I'm thinking, he knew. Look at that album cover man - he knew. And nobody else did. That would be so Bowie... SO fucking Bowie. A day and a half later, I'm thinking it's one of the great deaths. If it was a fairly decent album, it would be a great death, but it's a fantastic album. I'm very jealous of anyone who listened to the album before his death tho. Did you wonder, those that did?
No. I ordered it on CD on Thursday night because Amazon has an AutoRip service where you get the download as soon as it's officially released as well as the CD posted out.
I listened to it all weekend and didn't suspect anything. Bowie was always good at playing characters and unless you're looking for it specifically the lyrics can be interpreted differently by different people.
I even had a discussion with a user on YouTube who commented on Friday that he thought the video for Lazarus was his way of saying goodbye as he knew he was dying. I asked him how he knew that.
When he died the penny dropped on all the stuff I'd heard on the album and on the video. I did think he looked very old in the promotional photos and music videos. The first song that I realised what he meant exactly was Dollar Days. "If I'll never see the English evergreens I'm running to, it's nothing to me" - that to me says he is talking about heaven and if there is no afterlife, he doesn't really need it anyway. "I can't give everything away" it's pretty obvious what he meant by this now.
I don't know exactly why he called the album Blackstar - whether it is after the constellation Cancer (it has been referred to as the Dark Sign and described as black with no eyes - no eyes like in Bowie's two music videos from Black star), whether it's a reference to a type of cancer lesion or whether it's a reference to the Elvis Presley song, Black Star: "Every man has a black star, a black star over his shoulder, and when a man sees his black star, he knows his time has come".
Whatever it is, it's one last piece of genius by Bowie.
Also to the poster above, I wouldn't rule out another Bowie album or at least a re released Blackstar ala The Next Day - there is more music he wrote for the album that didn't make the final project.
