David Bowie Reveals Artwork and Trailer for New Album Blackstar

David Bowie has revealed an ultra-ambitious, dramatic video for “Blackstar”, the lead single from his new album of the same name (stylised as ‘★’).

Bowie has a tendency to drop fully actualized artistic pieces. The film was directed by Johan Renck, who is also using “Blackstar” for the theme song of his British TV show The Last Panthers. Remember when he made that music video with his doppelganger Tilda Swinton?

“On the day of execution, on the day of execution”, he sings. (If you’re looking to scare the daylights out of your very religious parents this Thanksgiving, you’d be harder pressed to do better than this.) Even if the song itself isn’t as immediately gripping as a few of Bowie’s past experiments, it makes for is a captivating peek into his twisted fun-house of imagination. Bowie wasn’t in attendance, but the video’s director (Renck) was, as well as longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti (i.e., the man whose kiss inspired the song “Heroes”).

Referencing Bowie’s most recent full-length effort, released in 2013, he continued, “The Next Day started out trying to do something new but something old kept creeping in”. ★ (Blackstar), on his birthday, January 8, 2016. In the final movement, Bowie and two other prisoners are strung up like scarecrows, while the astronaut’s skull is used to a conjure a beast that torments the prisoners as they thrash against their crucifixes.