David Bowie: 6 Years without Him
Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane … they all died six years ago this week.
The world really has gotten a lot worse since that day in January 2016. We won’t list the ways; you already know. We cannot prove that this happened as a result of Bowie’s death; but we cannot prove that it did not.
We’ve thought a lot about him in the last six years. Here are some things to read, from our pages.
First, begin with last year’s recollection, in which we surveyed various articles published across the media to mark that terrible fifth-year anniversary. “In a way, it seems like yesterday,” we wrote then, “waking up to that horrible news, just one day after waking up to his new recording on our phones. A new record, ‘Blackstar,’ came out on his birthday, and the next day he was gone. But it also seems like a lifetime ago, because of all the horrible things that have happened since.”
Next, read our three-year remembrance, For David Bowie, On The Anniversary Of His Death And Birth. “David Bowie’s death was not just any death,” we wrote. “[H]e’d always seemed somehow above mundane things like dying. It didn’t seem worth his time.”
To remind yourself that David Bowie was (unbelievably) just a human being, read A Few Thoughts On The Remix Of David Bowie’s “Never Let Me Down” Album, in which Steven S. Drachman reviews the bumpy journey of what some think was Bowie’s worst album. “Sometimes things don’t work out,” Drachman wrote, “and everyone looks for someone to blame.”
Finally, in Catchy Songs We Can Listen To Over And Over Again, our Oblivioni columnists explain why Bowie’s “Everyone Says Hi” is a repeatable ditty that just may (or may not) be profound.
^^^
