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David Bowie Dies At Age 69 (bbc.co.uk)

Posted by Soulskill on from the rest-in-peace dept.

echo-e writes: Renowned singer David Bowie has died after an 18-month battle with cancer. His latest album, Blackstar, was only just released on Friday — his birthday. His last live show was in 2006. Bowie rose to fame in the 1970s, and he is known for hits such as Under Pressure, Let's Dance, and Space Oddity. He also appeared in handful of films, such as Labyrinth in 1986. Bowie was also notable for being one of the few musicians to immediately see the value and staying power of MP3s and the digital distribution of music. If anything, he was overly optimistic about it. In 2002, he said, "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."

12 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Awful... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll miss him and his excellent music.

  2. True artist by Aethedor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whether you like his music or not, there is no denying that David Bowie was a true artist, a real entertainer. There was nothing fake about him. Nowadays, we don't see real artists like him very often.

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    1. Re:True artist by rgbatduke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And he would have made a great Elrond...

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    2. Re:True artist by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Whether you like his music or not, there is no denying that David Bowie was a true artist, a real entertainer. There was nothing fake about him. Nowadays, we don't see real artists like him very often.

      I suspect that you're seeing history through rose-tinted glasses. There were plenty of pop-acts in every era that Bowie overlapped with, we simply don't remember many of them. People don't remember acts like Elastica or Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen that charted and were popular for a short time. Hell, look at Weird Al's parodies throughout the years, there are some artists he parodied whose specific work is unknown now that were popular enough at the time to justify parody, like Tiffany and George Harrison's solo work.

      Bowie was special, but he isn't unique. As far as musicians that have gone through several iterations of their personas, Kylie Minogue comes to mind, and when it comes to production and stagecraft along with actually crafting musically-clever songs, I like Spacehog and Muse. Absoutely modern techniques like Autotune are frustratingly common even with singers that can actually sing, but there are still acts worth following in popular music even if their albums are not immune to some of those tools.

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    3. Re:True artist by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I still think that's incorrect. The majority of modern acts that record labels push are, to an extent, puppets of the record labels, but mostly because, like how Hollywood wants every movie to be a blockbuster, these are the acts that they're convinced will knock it out of the park. Why would a label spend a moderate amount of money to get a simple equal return, when they can spend a bit more and get an order of magnitude more?

      These acts getting arrested for doing stupid things also helps with their sales, so long as the things they do to get arrested are that which we all point and laugh at rather than being truly revolted by. Young, dumb singers whose teen angst bullshit is highly public are great targets. Nearly all of us had our share of it, but we lacked the financial means to get into real trouble or to be so highly visible while doing it. These singers and musicians that the record labels are using have that means and thus when they do the same kinds of dumb shit that we all did, they get busted but also increase their profiles.

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      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    4. Re:True artist by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Long story short; we don't see many musicians of his caliber today and we didn't see many back then either.

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    5. Re:True artist by Jhon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      David Bowie and Bing Crosby. I don't think anybody will ever beat Crosby's records (though I think "we are the world" took the number one spot for a while -- and it took every pop artist of the time to knock Crosby down a notch) but that duet between Crosby and Bowie was awesome and demonstrates the longevity of his career.

      I'm not a fan of all Bowie's work -- certainly not most of it. But there's enough of his catalog that I believe we'll see/hear his music long after the majority of "pop stars" today are gone (I'm looking at you Beyonce).

  3. Major Tom will be giving the eulogy by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and the spiders from Mars will be the pallbearers.

  4. Re:Possibly Lung by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If that's true, then he knew what the risks were when he was smoking. It's a horrible way to go but it's simply paying the piper for things you did earlier in life. It happens to the best of us.

  5. Re:Possibly Lung by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If that's true, then he knew what the risks were when he was smoking. It's a horrible way to go but it's simply paying the piper for things you did earlier in life. It happens to the best of us.

    Keith Richards is laughing at you right now.

  6. Re:Possibly Lung by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shove this self-righteous crap up your ass.

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  7. Re:Watch the new videos by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He must have recorded knowing his death was imminent.

    The video for Lazarus was released on Friday. David Bowie in a hospital bed. First lines of the song "Look up, I'm in heaven"

    He will be missed. Even his death was a creative form of art.