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David Bowie: Authentic oddity or oddly authentic?

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Nick de Sherbinin

What a strange beginning to this week: just after reading glowing reviews for David Bowie’s new jazz-influenced album, to wake up to the news that he had died at 69. I heard the news today, oh boy, to quote Bowie quoting John Lennon.

He had fought cancer quietly for 18 months and had released a morbid music video set-piece days before he passed away.

The more I have thought about David Bowie in the last few days, the more I am convinced that he represented something noble, true and, yes, authentic. How can that be true of an artist who is remembered as much for his spiked hair and sequined costumes as the durability of his music? Who appropriated musical forms like my brother in law borrows electric tools? What was so authentic at the core of this restless, eclectic and ultimately elusive artist?

A good place to look for the real David Bowie is in plain sight: his songwriting. Behind his pop tunes, catchy hooks and sparkly performances was the mind of a sober, keen-eyed observer. Listen to the rapid-fire story telling that is obscured by the glossy production of Young Americans, a story of hope, deception and disillusionment. In the slow jam Fame, Bowie reflects on the hollow victory success brings – self-reflective and profound. His is the music of doubt, disquiet and disillusionment, yes. But he was always deeply human in his observations.

Bowie devotees always seemed a bit out there to me, but it’s clearer to me now that he spoke to fans not as a proselytizer of ‘party’, but as a pied piper of the different, the dispossessed yearning to be themselves. In 1987, Bowie said in an interview, “For me, rock was always about narrative or putting forward little stories and ideas, however strange or off the wall they might be.” He appeals to both partiers for whom his songs are simply dance floor fodder and to those for whom his musical storytelling has a profoundly empowering appeal – that is his genius.

I’m just now appreciating how much intelligence and insight Bowie brought to expressing the human condition. He did it while appearing in the audacious trappings of a glam rock performer. Theatricality brought his genius to the ears of millions. But it was the power of his songwriting and lyrical integrity that confirmed his authenticity.