First and foremost, Rest in peace to one of the greatest artists to ever grace earth. To constantly and drastically change styles and effectively, at points, genres is an applaudable task as it is but to do it with such ease and so well is quite simply unequivocal.
But, a mere 2 days before Bowie's tragic death he released his final studio album, Blackstar. With the cover emblazoned with one large Blackstar and smaller triangles below it which add up to a Blackstar themselves, simplicity is immediately in your mind going into this record. Being only 7 songs long, without knowing that Bowie was terminally ill when recording it could have been a major problem as to the amount of tracks, but it isn't, we should just be glad that he cares about his fans enough to make this music while he was so ill. The album kicks into gear with the 10 minute long Blackstar, a dark and brooding single in its own right which is much better when listened to with the emotional video in which Bowie confusingly looks back on his career whilst still maintaining artistic ideas. The song does become tedious, if not for the switch up halfway through with the two halves being so unrecognisable to each other that they could easily be separated into two separate songs and for this it makes this song harder to listen to more than a few times.
The album is dark and does hint Bowie's passing more than once and none more so than the line "look up now, I'm in heaven" from the song Lazarus which is an exceptional song and is definitely the high point of this brilliant final album. The instrumentation on every song is brilliant and in some places pounding and ominous which creates a dark atmosphere to put you right in his shoes as he was going through this traumatic final stage of his life. This album is not an easy listen by any stretch, it is one of those albums better in its entirety and does become quite depressing over the course of the 7 songs. However, as an album it fits together perfectly and fits the context of reality extremely well, it's just unfortunate that the cause of this album was the passing of a legend. RIP Ziggy Stardust, and thank you for all the great music.
8/10