David Bowie: Blackstar (2016)

Blackstar is David Bowie's 25th studio album, released back on 8 January to widespread acclaim. Two days later, and without warning, David Bowie was dead, succumbing to a liver cancer that he had deliberately kept quiet from the public and the press.

The death of such a hugely talented and influential artist overshadowed his final work. It was impossible for me, at any rate, to listen to Blackstar without dwelling on its creator's passing. David Bowie was and remains one of my all-time favourite performance artists. His music was astonishingly good. His various styles and performing identities were groundbreaking and near-unique. The album and the artist are irrevocably united now in his death.

That is clearly a deliberate choice on Bowie's part. It is typical of an artist of his kind to not only plan his own funeral, but to transform it into an artistic event at the same time. The album was fantastic for two days, and then upon hearing it following Bowie's death the entire work took on a new significance. Lyrics suddenly meant different things. Even the term 'blackstar' refers to a form of cancerous tumour.

David Bowie: The Next Day (2013)

The Next Day was a hell of a surprise back in 2013, with David Bowie spontaneously coming out of apparent retirement after a heart attack ended his 2004 world tour. The album's lead single was simply released without fanfare in January 2013, with no advance publicity. It was simply a case of revealing a new song out of nowhere, and then a new album soon afterwards. The Next Day represented yet another phase in Bowie's career, with another seeming change in identity: now an intensely private performer, Bowie released an album of new songs but did not appear in interviews or undertake any tours. Even the album's cover seemed to suggest a new reclusive identity: the original cover art to his legendary album Heroes with Bowie's face obscured by a white square. It seemed - it still does - a striking erasure of his popular identity, leaving just the music behind for his fans to enjoy.

I suspect history will obscure The Next Day to a large degree in favour of his 2016 follow-up, Blackstar, which was released just days before his death from cancer. I think that will prove a pity, since The Next Day is an unexpectedly strong album with so many exceptional songs to recommend.

Outside (1995)

Last night, along with everybody else in the developed world, I heard the news that David Bowie had died. It seemed a tremendous shock, even though he had released a final album four days earlier that pretty much told everyone he was dying of cancer - we had all simply failed to listen to him. It was a typical move for Bowie, to turn his own death into a work of art. He was, and will remain through his work, a remarkable artist. Not just a musician but a multi-media phenomenon: an actor of stage and screen, the writer of a musical, a talented painter, a fashion icon, and so on. I am not certain there was a medium in which he did not at least experiment. He even co-wrote a videogame.

Bowie has had an enormous impact upon me personally. As a small child I was terrified of this creepy man dressed as a clown singing "Ashes to Ashes". When I was growing up in the 1980s he was a permanent fixture of music television through his sometimes-derided period of very commercial pop hits. He starred in Labryinth, one of the three films directed by another of my heroes Jim Henson. It was in 1993 that I was completely taken by Bowie's album Black Tie White Noise. From that point on I became an enormous fan of his work, eagerly awaiting new material while digging back and properly appreciating his earlier works.

I was trying to think of what to write about David Bowie - I knew I wanted to write something to honour his memory, because he's left such an indelible impression on me and influenced me a great deal. Should I write some kind of career overview? A list of my favourite songs? A look at his work as an actor? In the end I decided to keep it focused and personal. Here's a review of my absolute favourite David Bowie album: his 1995 release Outside.