Blackstar by David Bowie

Classic Albums. Hosted by Stevie Nix · Aug 7, 2025 · 48m

The reason Blackstar has already secured its place in the permanent record of popular music is something no amount of musical daring alone could manufacture. Blackstar is a document of a man confronting his own death with extraordinary artistic composure. Bowie had been diagnosed with liver cancer eighteen months before the album's release, and kept his illness entirely secret. He poured that knowledge — the fear, the acceptance, the dark humour, the desperate creativity — into the record, encoding it in imagery dense enough to feel meaningful without giving the game away.

Songs about…