David Bowie

I don’t remember the first time I heard a Bowie song. He was always just there. My mum liked his music so it got played sometimes when I was a kid, but I don’t know the actual first Bowie track I heard. What I do remember was hearing Life on Mars? and Starman when I was little, and of course I loved Labyrinth. Fashion, Fame and Sound and Vision were memorable from my childhood too, even if perhaps – at the time – I didn’t know who sang them.

I never really got into music until my late teens, and by then it was mainly Queen and Britpop. Bowie was there (not least because of Under Pressure), but not pervasively, and although I liked his stuff I was still probably in denial that I really, really, liked his music simply because well, my mum liked it.

Then, in the mid 90s, three things happened that opened my ears properly to him: The Buddha of Suburbia, the Bowie and Pet Shop Boys’ Hallo Spaceboy, and Little Wonder. Here was David Bowie not like David Bowie was before. He wasn’t my mum’s David Bowie any more. Suddenly, I was drawn to listen to everything he’d ever done. I remember borrowing Outside from the local library and being in awe that this album was almost a Bladerunner style story in musical form. I’d never known an album like it. As well as Hallo Spaceboy, which I already knew, We Prick You and The Hearts Filthy Lesson stuck with me and have done ever since. The whole album is incredible, but somehow is perhaps the his least mentioned.

With the floodgates open I was a massive fan. I can honestly say there has never been anyone in music who has been so diverse, so creative, and so talented. I can’t name a single track of his I dislike. Even the “comedy” songs like The Laughing Gnome are still great. He’s far and away my favourite singer, songwriter, performer… whatever you need to mark him as. And do you know something? I don’t even think he’s that fantastic a singer. Sure, he can sing, but so many people have a better voice. But it’s not about how he sings – it’s all about what he sings.

I, like many others, awoke on Monday morning to the news that he’d died. After the shock, and it was shock because he wasn’t that old, wasn’t (publicly) known to be ill, and always seemed he be around forever, reinventing himself every couple of albums – after that, I was sad. I was very sad. Famous people I’ve never met die all the time and I’m not sad. Terry Pratchett died last year and I was sad, but David Bowie? Terribly sad with actual tears. However stupid that may seem, and I can’t explain why exactly. He wasn’t my friend. I didn’t want to be him. He didn’t change my life. He seemed to genuinely be a thoroughly nice man, and he was always there, always in my music collection. Always the go-to whenever I wanted to listen to music. Even when I put iTunes on shuffle his tracks turn up one time in three: It’s actually become a joke with my wife and my colleagues. She even says it’s my “David Bowie Pod”. As I listened, of course, to him on random on the bus on the way to work, Where Are We Now? from The Next Day started playing, and melancholy properly sat in. I hadn’t realised how sad the song was before.

And here’s a reason to be properly sad: There will never be any new David Bowie songs.

Just last week he released what would be his final album – Blackstar. I’ve listened to it yet, but was pointed at the video for the track Lazarus. It’s below, unless Youtube have taken it down, but don’t watch it if you’re likely to feel down due to Bowie’s death. He’s saying goodbye and it’s really upsetting.

RIP David Bowie.