Blackstar (album)
Blackstar (stylised as ★)[1] is the 26th and final studio album by the English musician David Bowie. Released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday, the album was recorded in secret in New York City with his longtime co-producer Tony Visconti and a group of local jazz musicians: Donny McCaslin, Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre and Mark Guiliana. The album contains re-recorded versions of two songs, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and "'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore", both of which were originally released in 2014. More experimental than its predecessor The Next Day (2013), the music on Blackstar combines atmospheric art rock with various styles of jazz. Bowie took inspiration from artists including Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips, listening to them during the album's production. The cover art, designed by Jonathan Barnbrook, features a large black star with five star segments at the bottom that spell out the word "BOWIE".
Blackstar
8 January 2016
January–May 2015
The Magic Shop and Human Worldwide (New York City)
41:14
- David Bowie
- Tony Visconti
The album was preceded by the singles "Blackstar" and "Lazarus", both of which were supported by music videos. Two days after its release, Bowie died of liver cancer; his illness had not been revealed to the public until then. Visconti described the album as Bowie's intended swan song and a "parting gift" for his fans before his death. Upon release, the album was met with commercial success, topping charts in a number of countries in the wake of Bowie's death, including the UK, and became his only album to top the US Billboard 200. It was the fifth-best-selling album of the year, worldwide, and has been certified Gold and Platinum in the US and the UK, respectively.
Critically acclaimed, Blackstar won three Grammy Awards at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017 and awarded the British Album of the Year at the 2017 Brit Awards. It was listed as one of the best albums of 2016 and later the 2010s decade by numerous publications. Outtakes from the recording sessions were released on the No Plan EP in 2017. In the years following Bowie's death, commentators have named Blackstar one of his best works, and was included in the 2018 edition of the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Release[edit]
The title track was released as the album's lead single on 19 November 2015[56] and used as the opening music for the television series The Last Panthers.[57] Its music video, shot in September 2015 in a Brooklyn studio,[58] is a surreal ten-minute short film directed by The Last Panthers director Johan Renck. It depicts a woman with a tail, played by Elisa Lasowski,[59] discovering a dead astronaut and taking his jewel-encrusted skull to an ancient, otherworldly town. The astronaut's bones float toward a solar eclipse, while a circle of women perform a ritual with the skull in the town's centre.[60] The short film won the award for Best Art Direction at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards.[61]
The second single, "Lazarus", was released on 17 December 2015 as a digital download, and received its world premiere on BBC Radio 6 Music's Steve Lamacq Show the same day.[62] A music video for "Lazarus", shot in November 2015 in a studio in Brooklyn and again directed by Renck,[63] was released on 7 January 2016, the day before the album's release. It prominently features Bowie, appearing with a bandage and buttons sewn over his eyes, lying on a deathbed.[22] The video was nominated for three awards: Best Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Editing, at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards.[64]
Blackstar was released on 8 January 2016, coinciding with Bowie's 69th birthday, through his ISO label, Columbia Records and Sony Music.[65][66][67] Two days later on 10 January, Bowie died of liver cancer; his illness had not been revealed to the public until then. Visconti described the album as Bowie's intended swan song and a "parting gift" for his fans before his death.[2] Within days of the album's release, online retailer Amazon.com temporarily sold out of both the CD and LP editions.[68] The third and final single, "I Can't Give Everything Away", was released posthumously on 6 April.[69]
The outtakes "No Plan", "Killing a Little Time" and "When I Met You" were included on an EP, No Plan, released on 8 January 2017, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday.[70] The three songs had appeared on the soundtrack album for the Lazarus musical in October 2016.[70][71] In 2018, Jon Culshaw played Bowie in the BBC radio play The Final Take: Bowie in the Studio, an imagined account of Bowie as he works on the album and looks back over his life.[72]
Commercial performance[edit]
Blackstar was already on course to debut at number one on the UK Albums Chart prior to the announcement of Bowie's death on 10 January 2016, according to the Official Charts Company.[117] The album debuted at number one after selling 146,000 copies in the first week[118] (a week that saw four other Bowie albums in the Top 10 and a further seven in the Top 40, the latter equalling Elvis Presley's chart record)[119] and became his tenth number-one album in the UK.[120] The album remained three weeks at number one,[121] falling to number two behind another Bowie album, the compilation Best of Bowie (2002), which became the first-ever album to get to number one in the UK because of streaming.[121] As of January 2018, the album has sold 446,000 copies in the United Kingdom.[122] Bowie was the biggest-selling vinyl artist of 2016 in the UK, with five albums in the vinyl Top 30, including Blackstar as the number one vinyl album of the year. It sold twice as many copies as the previous year's winner, Adele's 25.[123]
In the US, the album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, moving 181,000 copies in its first week.[124] Its number one debut was previously anticipated by Billboard,[125] though its total sales exceeded expectations by 51,000 copies.[126] The album topped the iTunes chart following Bowie's death, with Best of Bowie (2002) placing second.[126][127] It was Bowie's first number one in the US and best weekly sales figure.[128][129] It was the 14th-best-selling album in the US in 2016, with 448,000 copies sold that year.[130] After news of his death, some music stores in both the US and UK sold out of copies.[131][132] The album also peaked at number one in 24 countries, number two in Greece[133] and Mexico,[134] number four in Hungary,[135] and number five in Japan.[136] It has since been certified Gold in Germany, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the US, certified Platinum in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the UK, and 2× Platinum in the Netherlands. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), it was the fifth-best-selling album of the year, worldwide.[137] It has sold more than 1,900,000 copies as of April 2017.[138]
Notes