These are being shared a fair bit on Twitter – the isolated vocal
tracks to two of Bowie’s most celebrated songs, Space Oddity and Ziggy
Stardust. A fantastic listen, both of them.
Until the last, David Bowie,
who has died of cancer, was still capable of springing surprises. His
latest album Blackstar appeared on his 69th birthday on 8 January, and
proved that his gift for making dramatic statements as well as
challenging, disturbing music hadn’t deserted him. Throughout the 1970s, Bowie was a trailblazer of musical trends and
pop fashion. Having been a late-60s mime and cabaret entertainer, he
evolved into a singer-songwriter, a pioneer of glam-rock, then veered
into what he called “plastic soul”, before moving to Berlin to create
innovative electronic music. In subsequent decades his influence became less pervasive, but he
remained creatively restless and constantly innovative across a variety
of media. His capacity for mixing brilliant changes of sound and image
underpinned by a genuine intellectual curiosity is rivalled by few in
pop history. Blackstar was proof that this curiosity had not diminished
in his later career.
