ON JANUARY 8, David Bowie would have turned 70 years old. On January 10, it will be a full year since his death from cancer—a surprise that arrived almost simultaneously with the release of Blackstar, Bowie’s 25th studio album and as perfect a farewell statement as a musician has ever made.
As we emerge, slightly dazed, from the year-end onslaught of best-of-2016 lists into a fresh but fearful 2017, there’s a sense of wanting to close the book on these difficult past 12 months and all they’ve entailed—and perhaps that includes both the puzzle box of the Blackstar album and the tragic loss that accompanied it. But for me, the last year has not only refreshed and rejuvenated my lifelong love of Bowie’s work, it’s reframed his legacy in a way I never could have expected.
It makes sense that our appreciation of Bowie changes with time. Bowie’s artistic method, after all, was one of continual reinvention, starting with his first recordings from the mid-’60s. By the time his 10th single, “Space Oddity,” became his first bona fide hit in his native England in 1969, David Robert Jones had not only changed his surname, his career had already taken on several incarnations: He’d been a teenaged R&B howler, an atypically introspective mod, an impish purveyor of music-hall whimsy, and a professionally trained mime, among other roles. As a committed devotee of the weird, artsy-fartsy fringe but also transparently desirous of pop-star fame, it took a while for Bowie to carve out his place. When he did, he was miles ahead of everyone else.