Album Review: Blackstar by David Bowie

I have written a lot about David Bowie on the Heath Post. Just do a search for David Bowie at the top of the page and you'll see a good collection of album reviews as well as quite a few other mentions. Bowie is a person I came too late in life. Didn't really know anything about his music until I listened to all those albums from the 70's as part of the Best of the 70's series for the HP. I came to really like Bowie and respect what he had accomplished with his career. He had a way of hearing what was happening in music that was unique and then taking that and forming it into his own creation that was years ahead of its time. As he grew older he wasn't so much an innovator as an entertainer, but he never stopped trying to push his music to be fresh and new and even at the end of his life this was the case.

It is impossible to listen to Blackstar and not think about the timing of it's release and how this album was a known final creation for Bowie. In some ways that makes it hard to review. How can you really review something like this? Well here goes.

Because Bowie has always been lurking around the edges of rock, he's often gone down roads of experimental rock or art rock. Ultimately I think of Bowie as an artist more than a musician. His albums have an artistic feel to them that is quite uniquely Bowie. This album may be the most experimental Bowie album I've listened to. I tend to not be a person who likes experimental or art rock. I usually am drawn to a few songs here and there that speak to me, but get lost often in the overall performance and this is true with this album as well. There are some very solid moments on this album for me, but all in all it's not my thing. Following the Rhapsody rating method I give the album 1 out of 5 stars for Just OK.