Archive for January 2022

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[Commlist] Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie

Mon Jan 10 16:27:05 GMT 2022





Leah Kardos's new book is out this week - /Blackstar Theory/ takes a close look at Bowie’s ambitious last works: his surprise ‘comeback’ project /The Next Day /(2013), the off-Broadway musical /Lazarus /(2015) and the album that preceded the artist’s death in 2016 by two days, ★ (pronounced /Blackstar/). It explores the emergent themes, philosophies and meaning-making affordances contained in these works from a starting point in musical analysis. It also features interviews with a number of key collaborators from the period: co producer Tony Visconti, graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook, musical director Henry Hey, saxophonist Donny McCaslin and assistant sound engineer Erin Tonkon.

This book defines Bowie’s /‘/late style’ and positions the last works within his chronology, and other relevant contexts: post-war arts practices, celebrity, late-capitalism, existentialism, the subconscious self, science/fiction. The work tackles the biggest ideas: identity, creativity, chaos, transience and immortality. Its knotted themes entangle realities and fictions across space and time; a catalogue of sound, vision, music and myth spanning more than 50 years is subjected to the cut-up; we get to the end only to find signposts directing us back to the very start.

The subject of death appears repeatedly throughout Bowie’s catalogue, but here in the last works it is a much closer presence - the finishing move. The last works articulate philosophical framework(s) for immortality, which this book explores, using Nietzsche’s concepts of the ‘dancing star’ and the /Übermensch,/ C.G. Jung’s process of individuation and becoming,//and Dyer’s updated /Star Theory./
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*Keywords: *popular musicology, David Bowie, death studies, celebrity studies, musical analysis, music and culture.

For more info, TOC and endorsements: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/blackstar-theory-9781501365386/


Here is a long interview I had with Chris O’Leary about the book: https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2021/12/20/leah-kardos-and-blackstar-theory-the-interview/

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