Within two years of releasing his 25th album The Next Day with longtime producer Tony Visconti and former touring band members and sessions players, David Bowie slipped into the now-defunct New York City studio The Magic Shop to secretly record what would become his final release.
Blackstar was released on January 8, 2016, on Bowie’s 69th birthday, and just two days before his death. The album topped the Billboard 200, and internationally, and marked Bowie’s first-ever No. 1 album in the U.S.
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‘Blackstar’ (2014-2015)
By early 2014, Blackstar was already in the works. Earlier in the year, Bowie laid down a few demos with co-producer Visconti, before disappearing for several months to work on more songs at his home studio.
By January 2015, the five-month recording sessions began and were rounded out by a cast of hand-picked musicians, including members of a jazz quartet led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin, whom Bowie stumbled upon the year prior at 55 Bar in New York City.
“I thought, ‘This is David Bowie, and he chose me, and he’s sending me an email?’” said McCaslin in 2015 at his surprise at being called on to work on the album.
Along with drummer Mark Guiliana and guitarist Ben Monder, McCaslin worked with Bowie on the Blackstar track “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime),” which first appeared on the 2014 compilation album Nothing Has Changed. The song was rerecorded for Blackstar, along with LCD Soundsystem‘s James Murphy on percussion.
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Kendrick Lamar
Though Blackstar coiled around more experimental jazz and art rock, Bowie was listening to two unlikely hip-hop artists during its recording: Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips.
“We were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar,” shared Visconti two months before the release of Blackstar. “We wound up with nothing like that, but we loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn’t do a straight-up hip-hop record. He threw everything on there, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do. The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid rock and roll.”
Bowie’s “Parting Gift”
Marked by the NASA star image designed by artist Jonathan Barnbrook—who also worked on the artwork for Bowie’s 2002 release Heathen and 2003 follow-up Reality, along with The Next Day—the album was preceded by the singles “Blackstar” and “Lazarus,” which were accompanied by two new videos—the latter track a poignant foreshadowing with the lyrics Look up here, I’m in heaven.
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The album won three Grammy awards in 2017 for Best Alternative Music Album, Best Recording Package, and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. That year outtakes from the Blackstar recordings were also released on the EP No Plan.
Blackstar, said Visconti, was Bowie’s “parting gift” to his fans.
“He always did what he wanted to do,” wrote Visconti on his Facebook page, one day after Bowie’s death. “And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life—a work of art. He made ‘Blackstar’ for us, his parting gift.”
Photos of David Bowie, 2015, by Jimmy King / Courtesy of Nasty Little Man
