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| Bowie and Tilda Swinton swap places |
I have been saving these images for some time to feature them here with some other photos from the great video for this song, which is one of the best things from The Next Day.
Oh, David. When you're making great art like this, you really were taken from us much, much too soon.
If you have not seen this video, WATCH IT. It's incredibly rich and compelling.
DAVID BOWIE
THE NEXT DAY
"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)"
Part of the joy of completing these DAILY BOWIE posts is discovery of things I did not know about Bowie and his work or connections with other Bowie fans, such as Chris O'Leary, who writes the amazing blog PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME, a lyric taken from Bowie's "Queen Bitch" song.
So, when I loaded the PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME page for this song, as I always do, I was thrilled to see some panels from one of my favorite comic books, the obviously Bowie inspired THE WICKED AND THE DIVINE, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, which I have written about on this blog before as well as their prior work Phonogram, which I shared after reading it last summer during during my trip to Traverse City with Dad.
O'Leary writes expansively about THE WICKED AND THE DIVINE in the blog entry for "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" and it's worth reading (see link below).
FROM PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME ON "THE STARS (ARE OUT TONIGHT)"
Sigismondi’s video for “Stars” played another variation. Apparently inspired by Sophie Miller’s video for the Eurythmics’ “Beethoven,” it dresses Bowie and Tilda Swinton as an older, well-off suburban couple who are stalked, and eventually consumed, by their vampyric counterparts: a beautiful young celebrity couple.
There are mirrors within mirrors, like the use of Swinton, Bowie’s unearthlier counterpart for decades, and the Norwegian model Iselin Steiro, who’d dressed up as some classic Bowie characters for a spread in Paris Vogue in 2010. There’s the reference to Bowie’s work in The Hunger (the vampire couple play off Bowie and Catherine Deneuve’s nightclub-foraging vampires) and of course, on his characterization in the press as a stylistic vampire. It’s also Bowie having fun with the horrific idea that David Bowie Is Old, playing a cranky pensioner enraged by his next door neighbor singing “Jean Genie” at all hours.
You’d expect the video to mock the idea of settled domesticity, that Bowie’s line “we have a nice life” is meant as a joke. But it turns out to be quite true. The star couple simply wants to escape their circuit of limousines and paparazzi spreads and are happy to be found sitting on a sofa, watching other stars work on TV.
"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)"
- THE NEXT DAY -2013
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Title is also an info link.
"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)"
Stars are never sleeping
Dead ones and the living
We live closer to the earth
Never to the heavens
The stars are never far away
Stars are out tonight
They watch us from behind their shades
Brigitte, Jack and Kate and Brad
From behind their tinted window stretch
Gleaming like blackened sunshine
Stars are never sleeping
Dead ones and the living
Waiting for the first move
Satyrs and their child wives
Waiting for the last move
Soaking up our primitive world
Stars are never sleeping
Dead ones and the living
Their jealousy's spilling down
The stars must stick together
We will never be rid of these stars
But I hope they live forever
And they know just what we do
That we toss and turn at night
They're waiting to make their moves
For the stars are out tonight
Here they are upon the stairs
Sexless and unaroused
They are the stars, they're dying for you
But I hope they live forever
They burn you with their radiant smiles
Trap you with their beautiful eyes
They're broke and shamed or drunk or scared
But I hope they live forever
Their jealousy's spilling down
The stars must stick together
We will never be rid of these stars
But I hope they live forever
And they know just what we do
That we toss and turn at night
They're waiting to make their moves on us
But the stars are out tonight yeah heh
The stars are out tonight
The stars are out tonight
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Rest in peace, David. We miss you.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1604.12 - 8:43
NOTE ON WHY THE DAILY BOWIE IS NO LONGER DAILY: For 53 days, I completed daily Bowie posts. My schedule is too demanding to make a post every day, so this will now be a feature that is called The Daily Bowie, but it will not be daily. I will post as I can. I will post often. But if I miss a day, I will skip it. Otherwise, I get in the position of making five Bowie posts all in one day, and that's a lot of Bowie for people to swallow all at once... (yeah, leaving that badly phrased, innuendo packed statement. I bet Bowie would have laughed at it).
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