David Bowie’s “Blackstar”: Weird Once More
David Bowie — whose new musical “Lazarus” is the fastest-selling show in the history of New York Theatre Workshop — is back with a song and video that reclaims his title as the grand old duke of weird. This time he is venturing once more into the outer limits of pop, with a gorgeously inscrutable avant jazz sci-fi torch song, all slippery drum’n’bass rhythm, two-note tonal melody with hints of Gregorian chant, shifting time signatures, churchy organ and spaced out wandering sax – like Ornette Colman on a moonwalk. And just when you think it can’t get any stranger, it turns into a bluesy ballad of mourning. “We were born upside down, born the wrong the way round,†he sings with enigmatic conviction. The accompanying video is HP Lovecraft meets David Lynch.
