An exhilarating account of Bowie’s spirituality and the quasi-religious nature of his work, from Space Oddity to Blackstar
It has become a tired cliche among fans to say that everything went wrong in the world after Bowie died in 2016. It also misses the point: rather than being one of the last avatars of a liberal order that has crumbled around our ears, Bowie prophesied the mayhem that has replaced it.
In his later years, he thought that we had entered a zone of chaos and fragmentation. This is what allowed him to be so prescient about the internet – not its promise, but its menace. There is no plan and no order. There is just disaster and social collapse. Those looking for reassurance should not listen to Bowie (please listen to something, anything, else). His world, from Space Oddity through to the background violence of The Next Day and Blackstar, was always drowned or destroyed or incinerated: “This ain’t rock’n’roll, this is genocide” as he exclaims at the beginning of Diamond Dogs.
Bowie prefigured Trumpworld in countless ways. Just listen to Under the God on the much-maligned Tin Machine in 1989: “Washington heads in the toilet bowl / Don’t see the supremacist hate / Rightwing dicks in their boiler suits / Picking out who to annihilate.” The only detail Bowie got wrong were the boiler suits. We live in a world of heathens, as Bowie hinted in the title of his brilliant 2002 album. Bowie did not want to lead a heathen existence.
