Bowie

It is far from his best album, and not even his best album of the 1990s, but Hours... is David Bowie’s most significant album that decade. Not because of the music, however, but how it was released: the first album by a major artist on a major label to emerge as a download before it arrived physically.Writing about the album in August 1999 ahead of its September release, Rolling Stone called Hours… a “cyber-coup”: a continuation of Bowie’s fascination with releasing music online, which he started with the Telling Lies…

Maria Schneider is one of the world’s most distinguished composers for jazz orchestra, a key collaborator for David Bowie and a seven-time Grammy winner – but it’s likely that you won’t have heard her work, and never will. This is entirely by design.Back in the early 2000s, it was illegal filesharing that angered Schneider. These days, the 63-year-old is confronting streaming platforms. “It’s a threat to democracy, to ideas, to creativity,” she says of business models driven by data exchange.Having testified to the US…

I was watching Ready Steady Go! when the Beatles said that Shout was their favourite song. Do you remember that moment? RobertWinchester49When Ready Steady Go! went out, the streets would be empty because the whole country was watching. I was like every other 15-year-old girl – obsessed with the Beatles. So for John and Paul to say Shout was their favourite record released that week was phenomenal. They were revolutionising the world, so it didn’t get any better than their recommendation. I can thank the Beatles for…

David Bowie would have been dropped before he ever made a global hit record in today’s hyper-competitive music industry, according to Chic’s Nile Rodgers, who said labels were failing to nurture unique talent and were instead focusing on profit.The songwriter and musician who produced Let’s Dance alongside Bowie – which took him into the pop mainstream in the 1980s – said no modern label would have given Bowie time to produce a hit record after his run of albums in the 1970s that failed to win commercial success beyond…

Actress Tilda Swinton has revealed she had a candid conversation with legendary musician David Bowie three years before he died in which he confessed he did not believe in an afterlife. The actress worked with the legendary musician on the music video for his 2013 single `The Stars (Are Out Tonight)` and she`s opened up about a candid conversation they had in which Bowie gave his thoughts on life after death - and insisted he simply didn`t believe in it, reports femalefirst.co.uk. Speaking to the Guardian…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeThe filmmaker Todd Haynes is American cinema’s chief translator of desire and repression, but he doesn’t feel that way on set. “All of my movies feel headed for disaster when I’m making them,” he says. “Just, like, dancing on the precipice of it.” He’s fixed his eyes on me, winsome behind dark spectacles. “But isn’t that why we’re on this earth? Do something scary! Do something you…

The country singer's latest single brings in riffs from 1974's "Rebel Rebel" Chris Young released a new single, “Young Love & Saturday Nights,” incorporating the signature guitar lick from David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel.” The track was co-produced by Young with Corey Crowder and Chris DeStefano and written by Ashley Gorley, Jesse Frasure, and Josh Thompson. Bowie has been credited as an unlikely writer on the song, as well. “When I first heard this song, I immediately connected…

Researchers poring over imagery and data from the Perseverance rover on Mars have found evidence of organic molecules in the planet’s Jezero Crater, potentially providing evidence of the planet’s carbon cycles and its ability to host life.Cecilia Rose Gooding on the Writers Strike | io9 InterviewThe discovery is by no means a confirmation that life once existed on Mars, but it is a sign that the conditions necessary for life as we know it once did. Perseverance is investigating many aspects of the fourth planet from the…

DA Pennebaker’s record of David Bowie’s final concert on the Ziggy Stardust tour at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1973 (Bowie is part of the reason we will never be reconciled to saying “Eventim Apollo”) is rereleased after a restoration. It was the legendary “all killer no filler” gig at which, in the presence of the Spiders from Mars – Mick Ronson (guitar), Trevor Bolder (bass), Mick Woodmansey (drums) – he retired his Ziggy Stardust persona, announcing to a stunned crowd that it was the last time he would ever play (as…

This Thursday marks 50 years since David Bowie’s Life on Mars? was released as a single. A cornucopia of surreal images, a musical soap opera to float away with, it still regularly appears in lists of the greatest ever Bowie songs – and indeed lists of the greatest songs by anyone.Trying to deconstruct this tale starring mice, Mickey Mouse and a mousy-haired girl, is about as easy as getting to Mars itself. I should know as I cycled one of the song’s lyrics – “from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads” – pedalling 2,700 miles in…