5. Lazarus, 2016

Bowie’s last album, Blackstar, was released on January 8, 2016, which he worked on while battling cancer. Lazarus, also the title of a song on Blackstar, is an Off-Broadway musical at the New York Theatre Workshop that Bowie collaborated on with Ivo Van Hove, which opened in November 18, 2015 and will have its last performance on January 20th. The New York Times wrote just before the show opening that Bowie “conceived the show as a sort of sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth the 1963 Walter Tevis novel that inspired the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film, in which Mr. Bowie starred as Thomas Newton, a louche, orange-haired extraterrestrial.

The video for Lazarus, above, is directed by Johan Renck, who says on on Bowie’s website:

“One could only dream about collaborating with a mind like that; let alone twice. Intuitive, playful, mysterious and profound… I have no desire to do any more videos knowing the process never ever gets as formidable and fulfilling as this was. I’ve basically touched the sun.”

The opening lines of the song, with Bowie in what appears to be a hospital bed, are “Look up here, I’m in heaven.” Later, he sings “By the time I got to New York, I was living like a king.” Hauntingly it concludes:

This way or no way, You know, I’ll be free

Just like that bluebird, Now ain’t that just like me

Oh I’ll be free, Just like that bluebird

Oh I’ll be free, Ain’t that just like me.