Some guff about David Bowie

David Bowie is back. His new album was made in secret, his first new music in a decade. Bowie had more or less disappeared from public life in 2006. Given there were some grisly rumours that he was dying, it’s no surprise he lead-off song, Where Are We Now, has inspired such a reaction. It’s good to have an old friend back.

The song is not bad too. It is mildly overproduced, always a risk with a record produced over time. Overproduction is a common pitfall in popular music. Bowie albums past have avoided that trap by being recorded quickly and spontaneously. Of course no one would have cared if this song was written and released in 2005, if Bowie had not had a massive heart attack and instead ploughed on with his silver age renaissance. It is a good song, wonderfully sung, plaintive and beautiful.

It is said Bowie lost his way in the 80s after gaining a mass audience but finding he had no connection with them. It is an essential contradiction in a form of popular culture expressed in individual consumption.

Bowie’s muse could almost be said to be popular culture itself. At his musical peak he watched his contemporaries very closely, listened to his predecessors very intently. His lyrical subject matter was a tapestry of modern fascinations, from drugs to UFOs to alternative religion and so on.

Bowie’s public persona (or personas) was an even more removed form of iconography. Whereas Brian Epstein took aspects of The Beatles personalities and made them into vivid caricature, David Bowie created full blown characters to perform. His aliases strike a chord because they reveal aspects of the audience’s personalities that they may not have even knew existed.

He is truly an icon, in the McLuhanite sense, in that he denies information (his most recent return being a case in point – while most famous musicians will start plugging an upcoming album before it is even finished – modern PR practice suggests stars should allow their public maximum access, with social media feeds, FB profiles and so on – David Bowie just released a new song). The audience is left to fill in the details, emotionally and intellectually invest in Bowie the icon.