From ew [excerpt], David Bowie, the legendary British rocker who spent the entirety of his career mixing genres and experimenting with theatricality, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 69 years old.
“David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer,” read a post on the artist’s Facebook page on Sunday night. “While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief.”
Bowie celebrated his 69th birthday on Friday by releasingBlackstar, his beautifully dark and twisted 26th studio album, which EW called in its review “an all-senses headphone surrender to the sound of an artist who is older and almost definitely wiser but still fantastically, singularly himself.
Born David Robert Jones, he released his self-titled debut album in 1967 but didn’t make his first big impact on the music world until 1969, when his single “Space Oddity” (from the album of the same name) became a worldwide hit. Bowie took his roots in folk rock and blew them open for “Space Oddity,” dressing up his simple strumming in ambient effects and a compelling sci-fi narrative that echoed the then-current fascination with space travel (it’s no coincidence that “Space Oddity” became a smash hit the same month that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first men to walk on the moon).
5 comments:
Goodnight Ziggy.
Ugh. This makes me so sad.
RIP Bowie. I'm still working my through his catalog. So much good music. I hear he ponders his mortality on his recent album but I haven't heard it yet, and kind of don't want to because, well, it's depressing.
I saw him live back in 2002 and he was phenomenal. Did you see him live? You should have seen him live.
Wah, so sad. Didn't even know he was ill. Never saw him live.
This is sad, and I've felt a little misty here and there today, but I feel like his art and his life are just hitting me in a Big Picture kind of way. It doesn't seem like he approached his death with anything short of the same bravery and intelligence he applied to everything.
It helps that one of my coworkers got to work on one of his last videos, and said Bowie thanked everyone and shook the hands of each person on the crew. What a rock star.
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