David Bowie just released a ten minute song, so I wrote a review of it

Oh hey what’s up David Bowie? How are you doing my pal? Are you doing well? It’s been a minute—two years, really, since you dropped that come back album, The Next Day. Remember that? Yeah it was a’ight. It had some pretty dope jams on it if I recall correctly—

Oh what’s this? You have a new album coming out, in January, on your birthday? Well that’s pretty cool that you are opting to #bless us all once again with new music. Is there anything you can tell me about your new album?

It’s called Blackstar, huh? But stylized by one big black star? Well that’s interesting, I suppose. Is there anything else you can divulge right now? The title track is ten minutes long, and that’s the album’s first single?  Oh weird.

Well let me take a listen to it and watch this video you made for it—

OH SHIT DAVID BOWIE WHAT IN THE FUCK? What happened to your eyes my dude? Why are you writhing around like a Pan’s Labyrinth motherfucker in this video? Do you not realize that this is, like, some straight up terrifying shit here that you are asking people to watch? WHY ARE THOSE PEOPLE GYRATING TO THIS ARRYTHMIC BEAT? WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS SONG?

Whooooooo boy.

Where do we begin with “Blackstar,” the titular track from David Bowie’s new, forthcoming album?

First, I should say, jokes aside, it’s great that Bowie is still making music, and making music only two years after The Next Day, an album that arrived, unceremoniously, after a decade of dormancy.

The Next Day was a relatively accessible listen—leaning more towards latter day Bowie in its sound and format, meaning, it was not, like, super weird or anything. Bowie hasn’t been super weird since 1995’s Outside, a high concept album about a world where murder is considered an art form, and he was, like, a detective or some shit trying to solve a case. I think. I don’t know. That’s a really weird, unsettling album but it has some pretty good songs on it like “Strangers When We Meet.”

But I guess when you are nearly 70 years old, it’s a good time to just get really fucking weird again, which is I think the general conceit for Blackstar as a whole—an eight song album that all signs say harken back to his artistic and drugged out peak in the 1970s with albums like Station to Station and Low.

The titular track, and accompanying video, seem like they are one in the same. The video would be nowhere near as weird and horrifying to watch without the song, and the song is still unnerving and jarring, but it’s amplified by the visuals.

“In the villa of Ormen stands a solitary candle,” Bowie sings, his voice contorted and tremoloy, adding to just how unsettling and confusing this all is—and it really only gets worse from there when looking at the video. Bowie, singing with a bandage covering his face, his eyes replaced by two black dots, writhes along sinisterly, shouting out the lyrics to the song while two methed out dancers hop along erratically in a room behind him.

And this is only one scene in the video. There are also horrifying scarecrows, Bowie as some kind of preacher, holding a book with a black star on the front of it, a dead astronaut with a bejeweled skull, and more. I mean, the fucking thing is ten minutes long so there’s a lot to get through—directed by John Renck, the thing is beautifully shot, but you can only make it through so much of it before you have to ask yourself what’s the point? What kind of story, if any, is this trying to tell?

Musically, “Blackstar” wastes no time getting down to business—whatever we are in the business of with this song. Comparing it to Bowie’s other 10 minute song, “Station to Station,” seems like the logical thing to do, and with that song, there was a whole lot of build up before Bowie actually arrived with his “Return of the Thin White Duke,” thing, then it segued into this post-funk coda. Sure it’s a long song, but it worked—it had direction, and more importantly, you felt like each part was really leading to something else.

There are distinctive parts to “Blackstar”—the arrhythmic and erratic introduction eventually makes way for a sinister, saxophone heavy slink where Bowie talks about what he isn’t, (a lot of things) and what he is (a blackstar.) And every time his voice chimes in with “I’m a blackstar,” I have to wonder if anyone pulled him aside to explain that “black star” is slightly antiquated slang for heroin.

It seems worth mentioning that “Blackstar” the song, as a song, benefits greatly from being separated from “Blackstar” the weird fucked up video. In experiencing the video for the first time, I was so put off by the visuals that I also started to write the song off as well. But it’s not that bad. It’s also not, like, amazing or a revelation by any stretch of the imagination. Once the really weird “Villa or Ormen” section ends, and the second portion of the song begins, it’s kind of picks up, and is marginally listenable, even somewhat catchy, with its repeated theme of “I’m a Blackstar.”

But, unlike “Station to Station,” it never goes anywhere. It just ends, and just about as erratically as it began, which makes it a bit of a mystery—as in what kind of larger picture do the other seven songs on Blackstar form when listened to from start to finish?

Blackstar arrives on January 8th and is available to preorder from the man himself.