Feature

Relive The Album: David Bowie’s album The Next Day reimagined his legacy with rebellious uncertainty

After a ten year hiatus, David Bowie made his long-awaited return in 2013 with The Next Day. It was an emblematic album, paying homage to the innovation of his previous work, blending some of his most experimental phases of music-making into a shameless glam-rock record. But above all else, it was confirmation of Bowie’s continued relevance in an industry that had undergone major cultural shifts since the heydays of a certain Ziggy Stardust.

Bowie’s music only seems to grow more eternal, more cherished, and the same goes for The Next Day. However, its origins predate its release, the roots of this record reaching back to 1977. Bowie had just made what would become his most iconic record ever, Heroes. An album that redefined what was considered possible in pop music’s ever-evolving landscape; an experimental ode to the fluidity of genre and identity.

36 years later, Jonathan Barnbrook defaced Heroes’ original cover art, plastering a white square over the haunting black-and-white image of Bowie’s face. The original title was also erased, and the new words “THE NEXT DAY” written in bold, black letters. Bowie intended for it to be a comment on the nature of his legacy and how it had been reimagined over time, giving way to a thematic precedent that was a reflection on mortality and aging. A man of infinite creation looking back at the many versions of himself and asking, “What next?” Or in his own words, “Here I am, not quite dying”.

The record opens with a violent provocation, its title track telling the story of a man (presumably Bowie) harassed by an angry mob and his body left to rot in a hollow tree. If the erasure of Heroes wasn’t vexing enough, then this certainly would be. Bowie’s motive was very clear, as it always had been – rebellion.  

“The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” is a visceral commentary on fame in a world where reality and illusion are never too far apart; “Love Is Lost” is sparse and despairing; “Where Are We Now” a soothing meditation on life’s fleeting romance; “How Does The Grass Grow?” a kind of industrial fusion of funk and rock, its distorted riffs and pounding drums an elegy to destruction. Jumping from slow-ska saxophones to fanciful, hell-bent guitars, pitch-bending melodies to astute production, The Next Day is steeped in uncertainty, and that’s why we love it.

Uncertainty is rebellion, and with that comes spontaneity, which is maybe one of Bowie’s greatest strengths as a songwriter. Sounds appear as if from nowhere, songs bend like rivers, guided by instinct; qualities of The Next Day that are, without a doubt, recurrences of some of Bowie’s earliest musical impulses.

That in itself seems like the best thing about this record, that an offering so preoccupied with the passing of time somehow managed to retain its youthfulness, and with extreme subtlety – as though 1977 was only a note away.

Little did we know we’d lose Major Tom three years later, with just enough time for him to release one more album. When you start to think about it in this way, you see that The Next Day was a reiteration of the past as much as it was the future. Bowie’s penultimate makeover, looking at himself in the mirror of time. A fading reflection met his wild, threatening gaze, and he responded, saying, “Here I am, not quite dying”.