Blackstar by David Bowie was released on 8th January, marking the singer’s 69th birthday. Two days later, Bowie died. Suddenly the album gained a new level of significance. The way in which a work is interpreted can be warped after the artist’s death, even more so when it is such a culturally significant moment. Separating our emotional response from the music itself is an impossible task, but it also seems rather redundant. In the case of Blackstar, the significance of the work lies in its quality, but also in the poignancy of its timing. In its finality, the album represents and honours the legacy of Bowie’s music, music that never practised in predictability.

Blackstar defies any particular genre, and it is hard to fully identify where it fits within Bowie’s past work. Arguably, its predecessor, 2013’s The Next Day marked a return to his music of the 70s, where an otherworldly Bowie reached both critical and commercial success in the realm of pop. The album appears to move firmly away from this idea of being commercially appealing, and arguably, Blackstar is not necessarily something that is particularly easy to listen to and comprehend (at least the first time around). However, this does not detract from the power and skill of the album itself. It is not an album that fits comfortably alongside his classic albums, and it is this unique style that makes it such a striking and standout work.

In no small part, its strangeness comes from the fact that in many cases one will have already encountered these tracks before Bowie’s passing. Suddenly, the album is thrown into a completely different light – its imagery and lyrics making a kind of sense that would have been completely absent without knowledge of his illness.

If created by a different artist, Blackstar would perhaps be described as ‘experimental’, but in regards to David Bowie, any form of seemingly ‘experimental’ music feels more like a carefully crafted art form. For Bowie, this ‘experimental’ sound is both sinister and elegant in equal measure, and utilises modern production methods as well as classical instruments. The result is brilliantly skillful work that descends into moments of meticulously crafted chaos, owing a debt to free jazz in doing so. Longer tracks such as the title-track ‘Blackstar’ and ‘Lazarus’ are the strongest examples of this. ‘Blackstar’, in particular, starts off with a sense of serenity almost comparable to that of Bowie’s 1971 album Hunky Dory. However, this soon descends into a darker and more brooding work, where both science-fiction electronics and saxophone enter, balancing both harmony and dissonance. This style creates an interesting musical tension: somewhere between peace and chaos, a tension that runs through the whole of the album, bringing the diverse range of tracks together.

As an album, Blackstar is noticeably concise: seven songs, through which Bowie is able to discuss life on earth and far beyond. He explores a vast range of human experience, centred on mortality and the afterlife, in an album that has a running time of just over 30 minutes. Perhaps these profound subjects, and his challenge in grasping them, explain the open way in which Bowie ends the album. The striking final track, ‘I Can’t Give Anything Away’, is strangely uplifting, but is by no means conclusive. The lyrics of the track are where Bowie most directly confronts mortality for the final time. “Saying more and feeling less, saying no but meaning yes” – in his final song, Bowie refuses to define himself. His music and his characters, in life and death, all demand dealing with deeply uncomfortable contradiction.

As a parting gift from Bowie, it leaves the listener intrigued, and it seems like the book is not closed. Blackstar seems to be leading somewhere, but we are left to create our own ending.  It is a poignant work that refuses to fit comfortably anywhere in Bowie’s repertoire, nor in contemporary popular music. This seems fitting from an artist like David Bowie, who will be remembered as a genius, partly because you could never fully understand him. Besides, fitting in is overrated.