There is no sense in trying to stand David Bowie’s later era up against some of the most iconic runs of all-time like the Berlin trilogy, the Ziggy Stardust phase, or his time spent as The Thin White Duke, but Bowie’s post-Tin Machine career was still transformative and worthy of reflection as we mourn the loss of music’s greatest showman.
To properly do that, we decided to look at five music videos from that period — including Bowie’s final two — that shed a little light on his evolution as an artist and remind us all why he was worthy of our adoration even until the very end.
“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” (1995)
Trent Reznor has said, many times, that Bowie’s Berlin trilogy — and specifically, Low — influenced his music, but the favor was returned in the mid-’90s when Bowie became enamored with industrial rock and, later, Reznor’s work. The two toured together and on a few occasions collaborated. But while 1995’s Bowie/Brian Eno collaboration, Outside, predates their working relationship, there’s the hint of reverence on the record to Reznor’s work and others who played in the industrial space like The Young Gods, who Bowie cited as an influence on the album.
Perhaps the more overt connection, however, is the visual tie between Bowie’s “Heart’s Filthy Lesson” (the first single off Outside and a song that Reznor eventually remixed) and the video for Reznor’s throbbing sex-metal opus, “Closer” (NSFW link, if you weren’t aware). Really, Bowie’s extreme papier-mache warehouse/art commune must share a wall with Reznor’s laboratory. But none of this is a complaint.
Bowie was an undeniable innovator, but he was also someone who identified as a “synthesist” and someone who could inject his unique grace into something and solidify its brilliance. It’s that skill, more than any other, that kept Bowie in the sun for almost half a century. If you’re cynical, you could say that was a survival instinct and that Bowie changed with the times to meet demand. But if that were the case, the swings would have been fuller and the results would have been far less interesting and far more popular in the later years. Instead, one could say that Bowie simply kept an open ear and went toward whatever interested him.
“I’m Afraid of Americans” (1997)
For the bulk of his career, Bowie wasn’t outwardly political when it came to his work, but that seemed to change slightly in the later stage. Specifically with the 2013 anti-war song “I’d Rather Be High,” 1997’s “I’m Afraid of Americans,” and the Dom and Nic-directed video for the latter, which casts Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor as a Travis Bickle-like rage monster who stalks Bowie as he runs through the street imagining that everyone is armed and dangerous.
Is “I’m Afraid of Americans” a statement on American gun culture and how it feels as though it has, at times, become our defining characteristic to the world? Perhaps, or maybe it’s a reaction to the reaction and the resulting paranoia? Regardless, Bowie said that he wanted the album to feel more aggressive and to speak to the times, and he certainly accomplishes that on “I’m Afraid of Americans;” which may be one of the stronger late-era Bowie songs thanks to a refined industrial sound that feels a bit more pop-inspired than the Outside sessions. Which is interesting in that the song was originally made for that album.
“Love Is Lost” (2013)
Bowie’s fascination with sampling, digital production, and synthesizers indicates that he is a man who might have been more comfortable, creatively, had he been born two or three decades later. The same is true when you look at the visual sense on display in his videos — particularly those produced after 2013. Bowie’s palette grew at the same speed as his pool of technological resources, but his desire to churn out material at a steady clip wasn’t able to keep up — specifically between 2003 and 2013. But then something occurred.
The final two bursts of creativity — 2013’s The Next Day and 2016’s Blackstar — reveal a melancholic artist aware of the fact that his most dynamic phase has ended and that he has little sway over the shape of his legacy. A somewhat different Bowie, but one that was, at once, sad, natural, and valiant in that he didn’t run away from hard truths about his own mortality, particularly in the latter album when he raged at the dying of the light with more vigor and snarl than in the preceding work.
“Love Is Lost” is, quite possibly, Bowie’s most artistically robust video and one that he made by himself over a weekend for $12.99, thanks to his personal camera and two puppets — a Pierrot puppet (with accompanying “Ashes to Ashes” significance) and one that looked more than a bit like the Thin White Duke era Bowie — that came from his archive. Though the video does owe a slight conceptual debt to projection artist Tony Oursler (who directed Bowie’s “Where Are We Now” video), the whole package really speaks to Bowie’s unique sense and the reflectiveness of the moment. Who knows, if given 20 more years, Bowie might have sought to apply his talent to long-form filmmaking. Another maybe to mourn.
“Blackstar” (2016)
When someone’s deeply unique vision speaks to our deeply unique tastes, it’s something like a miracle. When that artist continues to serve that vision long after those tastes have mutated, it’s another miracle, but one that isn’t celebrated in quite the same way. Some take the ride, some nod politely, and others claim false ownership over a legacy and shake their heads.
David Bowie’s “Blackstar” is not for everyone. It’s moving art and subjective in nature. An interesting piece of music and motion that jumps between styles deftly, recalling classic Bowie themes like the spaceman (one last time), puppetry (the dancing scarecrows), and paganism. It’s also, quite possibly, a statement of intent to go out on one’s own terms. And that’s not nothing. Think of how lucky we are that David Bowie spent the last 20 years in the way that he did. Pure expression, as opposed to the singers who become touring T-shirt cannons who fire out only reissues of their hits and standards that you can gently bop your head to. He didn’t need it. Bowie was free.
“Lazarus” (2016)
Few of us get to write that last sentence. Our stories end without completion and the space is either filled in by those who knew us best or left blank; the tale thrown onto the bargain pile or the garbage.
Bowie, clearly, knew the end was coming and orchestrated a grand farewell through his art. “Lazarus” will always live in a heightened place within our minds because it seems like a dispatch from the edge of the abyss by a man about to slip off. We’ll all dissect the imagery (those big gut punches of seeing Bowie in a hospital bed and his retreat into the dark cabinet) and the lyrics while searching for hidden clues, but, ultimately, the art is what the art is. In this case, one last haunting, well-honed, and gripping song, forever open to interpretation and forever there waiting for the next person to pick it up and have a look at it.
