[Starry Eyed]

Originally Posted by Keyser Soze

The song's been in my head for the last day, which means it's achieved 'earworm' status. I like it.

Video isn't my cup of tea, but I like that Bowie is still doing weird experimental art stuff with videos rather than making a video that looks like everyone else's.

I've given it a few more listens today and it's grown on me too, though it's still extremely depressing.

I agree with your comments about the video. It's not my cup of tea either but it's always nice to see an artist doing what they want and not following the crowd, so respect to the man.

[neo_wales]

I didn't find it depressing, more relaxing and from his point of view I suspect more reflective.

[Jon Ross]

Originally Posted by Hotgossip

Bowie and Sting are the only 2 older stars who have aged well, they are timeless.

Tantric Sting??? Do me a favour. He's a complete embarrassment and hasn't done anything decent since he was in the Police. The guy's the embodiment of muzak jazz and has been for nearly 30 years. That's before we get to his hypocrisy on the enviroment.

Bowie's new song, unfortunately, sounds like something Phil Collins would have come up with 20 years ago. It's even got the same dirgey over-production and keyboard sounds Collins would have given us. I thought Bowie said he had put his "Phil Collins years" behind him. He's still got an immediately recognisable and idiosyncratic voice though.

[Gigi4]

I read an article today, I believe it was in the Guardian, that the rest of the album will be more rock. I don't care for the first single too much, but hopefully the rest of the album will be different to the single and more sonically interesting.

[starfoxxx]

I really like the new song and he still sounds good to me, i tend to like voices as singers get older though even though they might not be as strong [debbie harry, ronnie dio]
not so keen on the video, or the album cover art really but they're both unusual which is good.
my favourite david bowie album [of the ones that i've heard] is outside anyway, probably not a popular choice with many people?

[Jon Ross]

Nice piece by Jonathan Ross:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013...-jonathan-ross

Bowie's comeback places him back at the centre of the whole shebang

Jonathan Ross, self-declared big Bowie fan, relishes the return of the old-school showbiz supremo


I am about as big a fan of David Bowie as you will find on the planet. Back when I hosted my Saturday morning show on Radio 2 (for nearly 11 years), I ensured we played a track from the Great One every single week – every single week bar one, when Andy, the chap I worked with, forgot to play it.

It was the closest we ever came to falling out. A few months later we tried to remedy this shameful blot on our record by playing every track from Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in order, (without really drawing attention to it) throughout one programme.

Things have been pretty quiet on the Bowie front for a long time now. After he last toured with his album Reality in 2003, he walked away from performing and recording. He had suffered a few health setbacks but also seemed, quite rightly, to be enjoying life on his own terms, as a husband and father to a young child. It seemed to most of us that he had done with being a rock star.

I chatted about this with another legendary music genius one night (a professionally miserable Mancunian of about the same age … you can guess). He thought it might be Bowie had figured he would never feel quite as relevant as he used to, never feel like he was at the centre of the cultural hurricane, so had maybe decided to cut his losses and ride off enigmatically into the sunset.

Certainly, when he made it clear he would not be appearing at the V&A retrospective highlighting his style and influence in fashion, and then declined to appear at the Olympic opening ceremony last year, I had slowly tried to accept and make peace with the idea that he had really called it a day.

I tried to take solace in the fact that he appeared to have managed to escape more or less intact from showbusiness. In short, I expected to see or hear nothing new from him, unless we were to meet socially. Until Tuesday morning of course.

I hadn't had the best of nights. The norovirus struck the Ross household, and me, my wife and my poor daughter – already worried about waking up to face the first of her mock GCSEs – had all come down with it. None of us had managed much sleep. Indeed, I had spent most of the night firing murky liquids from my body. So I was not quite certain I wasn't held in some ghastly fever dream when I noticed two emails had arrived on my phone. One was from Julian, who runs the Outside Group, Bowie's management company the other from Duncan Jones, the great man's son, with whom I'd been in touch on and off over the last few years regarding not his genius father but his own remarkable talent, having co-written and directed two of the best and most sophisticated science fiction thrillers of recent years, Moon and Source Code.

My first panic-filled thought was that the worse had happened … I felt even sicker than when I had been hunched kneeling in front of the toilet bowl an hour before and almost didn't open the mails.

Duncan's began so cheerily "Hi Gang …" that I felt immediately calmed. David Bowie had recorded a new album. He had a new single, produced by one of his greatest collaborators, Tony Visconti, available for download right now. After visiting iTunes I went to share on Twitter and of course found it had already spread, there, on Facebook and had even made the news – the news!

I suspect the long hiatus and the surprise of the new single were deliberate, that's the genius of David B. In an age when we can follow our musical heroes' every thought or whim on any number of social networks, when we can see a picture of Rihanna's breakfast and check out what Lady Gaga thinks of Die Antwoord in 140 characters, to maintain complete radio silence for 10 years immediately puts you ahead of and above the pack, as well as creating a hunger, a desire, a need for information that we can barely tolerate.

So to burst back with a single, a video, the promise of an album, all on the morning of your 66th birthday that's old school showbiz. That's something Colonel Tom Parker would have been proud of. That puts you right back at the centre of the whole shebang.

It's too soon for me to tell whether I'll love the song as much as the others. One of the miracles of the creative process is that I don't think anyone knows for a while, regardless of whether they are the creator or the audience. These things have to stay with you a bit before you can work them out. But I like the sound of it. It reminds me a little of Everyone Says "Hi" from 2002's Heathen.

His voice sounds slightly less majestic, slightly older, perhaps inevitably. But that gives it a quality that suits the song magnificently. As does the video, which is at once both remarkably simple and somehow very touching. The projected footage of late 70s Berlin is strange, it feels arbitrary, like random shots taken by a tourist. But that very feeling of being inconsequential and marginal oddly lends it the weight of greater importance … it feels personal. It feels real. And I suspect it's taking place in Bowie's New York art studio, with sculptures and paintings and mini-installations that he's been working on in between school runs and wandering the streets of Manhattan like a less flamboyant but no less loved Quentin Crisp.

So we have the album to look forward to, but no news yet as to whether he will consider live appearances or even interviews. Obviously, I laid down my marker right away. So perhaps I will once again have the pleasure of saying "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr David Bowie". Or perhaps I won't. Either way. I'm so very pleased he's back.

[Mart_UK]

Yet to see the video, but the new song is growing on me after a few more listens. Cant wait for the new album from Bowie.

[nathanbrazil]

Originally Posted by Jon Ross

Tantric Sting??? Do me a favour. He's a complete embarrassment and hasn't done anything decent since he was in the Police.

Not so. 'Fields of Gold' , 'If You Love Someone Set Them Free' , 'Fragile' , 'Fortress Around Your Heart' , 'Russians' and 'Englishman In New York' are all really good songs, IMHO.

Fair enough, Sting today looks like Fisherman's Friend, and his musak is horrible. But, if an when he wants to have a shave and get back to work, I have no doubt that he could produce some good stuff.

[nathanbrazil]

Originally Posted by jackbell

The album cover is both anarchic and disappointing. Did Banksy do it?

No, if he had it would've been good. This is just crap. It annoys me that an album 10 years in the making could not have had a really good sleeve.

[Keyser Soze]

Originally Posted by neo_wales

I didn't find it depressing, more relaxing and from his point of view I suspect more reflective.

Yes, it is very reflective. Sounds like his goodbye to me.

[nathanbrazil]

Originally Posted by Keyser Soze

Yes, it is very reflective. Sounds like his goodbye to me.

John Paul Reed forever!

[maninthequeue]

Originally Posted by nathanbrazil

No, if he had it would've been good. This is just crap. It annoys me that an album 10 years in the making could not have had a really good sleeve.

Personally I think the sleeve is genius.

The earworm lyrical hook of David Bowie's "Heroes" is "We can be heroes just for one day ...."

So what better than a post-modern effort of defacing that cover with a bold white square and calling the album "The Next Day".

Hence, the intentional pun aside, it is passing on the message further conveyed in the lead single that we are no longer heroes, but are mortal human beings well aware of our frailties.

Plus I like the contrast of the old analogue cover being replaced by a simplistic binary digital image, very much a nod to the fact this is his first release since most people have access to the internet, and download and listen to music digitally, rather than purchase a physical copy.

[Johnny Clay]

^ I like the sleeve art too. Obviously there's more to it than the market box-ticking so much commercial art does these days.

A comment on just how regurgited music has become?

A mocking play on the old addage that genius steals?

And the blanked out 'Heroes' hints at darker themes within.

We could discuss this all day

[Jon Ross]

Originally Posted by nathanbrazil

Not so. 'Fields of Gold' , 'If You Love Someone Set Them Free' , 'Fragile' , 'Fortress Around Your Heart' , 'Russians' and 'Englishman In New York' are all really good songs, IMHO.

IMHO bland Michael Parkinson-approved music. Music to go to sleep to perhaps. Not good for much else. File with Enya. We'll have to disagree on this one.

Originally Posted by nathanbrazil

Fair enough, Sting today looks like Fisherman's Friend, and his musak is horrible. But, if an when he wants to have a shave and get back to work, I have no doubt that he could produce some good stuff.

I couldn't care less what he looks like. Looks are valued too much in the pop business. A lot of awful music has been released upon the world because the people who make it look nice. I'd never stoop so low as criticising Sting for his looks. I'm talking about his crimes against music.

[Keyser Soze]

I knew the riff at the end reminded me of something.

It's this:

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

Very fitting.

[rbautz]

Originally Posted by Keyser Soze

I knew the riff at the end reminded me of something.

It's this:

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

Very fitting.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - David Bowie 2 of the best musician at that time in one film.

[Keyser Soze]

Originally Posted by rbautz

Ryuichi Sakamoto - David Bowie 2 of the best musician at that time in one film.

Beautiful film.

[welwynrose]

Originally Posted by Keyser Soze

Beautiful film.

and awesome soundtrack

[welwynrose]

Bowie's facebook page has updated with some more info on the video - the woman is the directors wife not Bjork

https://www.facebook.com/davidbowie

[Electra]

I just found this on Youtube from 1964

17 year old David Jones (Bowie) was interviewed on BBC Tonight programme by Cliff Michelmore as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men. I think he actually calls him Davey?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5zxeLwUSdk

What a sweet little thing he was

[rachelright]

The Main Question is will it be Number One? Cos one minute they are saying its not eligible the next it is and it's done so well online, I reckon if they allow it it will, if they don't it will be at some point!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqoIHslcbR8#

[LaVieEnRose]

Originally Posted by rachelright

The Main Question is will it be Number One? Cos one minute they are saying its not eligible the next it is and it's done so well online, I reckon if they allow it it will, if they don't it will be at some point!

It doesn't really matter. It's the only song that people are talking about, and that's as good - no, it's better than having a No 1 single these days.

[Fear of Fours]

The single is really growing on me.

[rhod]

An alternative version of the video (for those that don't like puppets!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbjn5Yso-jI

[gold2040]

Originally Posted by rachelright

The Main Question is will it be Number One? Cos one minute they are saying its not eligible the next it is and it's done so well online, I reckon if they allow it it will, if they don't it will be at some point!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqoIHslcbR8#

Bowie doesn't need to be number one