‘Five Years’ and ‘Blackstar’: How David Bowie’s perception of death changed over time
Music does much more than just sound pleasant; it serves as a bridge to deeper understanding. When someone is in love, they often write about it to process their emotions, and others experiencing similar feelings can listen and connect. This shared experience helps people better understand the world and themselves through the universal language of music.
Naturally, because of this ability to better understand our emotions, it’s no surprise that music has been used as a vehicle for the most complicated situations people can face. In life, there is nothing more definite than death, and yet the idea of facing and coming to terms with it remains perplexing. Enter gifted songwriters who unpack the afterlife and provide the same branch we have always relied on.
David Bowie knew he was going to die, and as a result, he wrote the album Blackstar. This was his way of coming to terms with the inevitable and not being afraid of it. However, it’s not the first time that Bowie wrote about his potential death, as earlier on in his career, following a dream where his father visited him, he was given a proposed date and means of dying.
In 1972, Bowie released the song ‘Five Years’, which has commonly been used as a metaphor for the end of the world. Even his drummer Woody Woodmansey wrote the song with the intention of it being a ballad for the end of days. “The idea of the song is that the world is ending in five years, so it was about finding a drumbeat that got that across – which was quite a challenge!”
However, Bowie revealed that the song was actually about his own death, admitting that one night he had a dream where his late father visited him and told him he would die in five years and that he should avoid air travel. By listening to Blackstar and ‘Five Years’, we see two different attitudes towards death by the same mind; the only thing separating them is time.
What’s most interesting is how trivial the idea of death seems to Bowie in ‘Five Years’. The song, despite starting slow, becomes a ballad, a true singalong that almost laughs in the face of death. This is likely because although he was aware of it, he probably wasn’t that worried about it. He still felt in a position where he could view the concept as trivial.
This changed as Bowie got older, and the concept of death became all the more real. The song and album Blackstar are convoluted, laced with free jazz and buried in heavy metaphor. This represents Bowie’s ultimate feeling during this period: confusion. The song struggles to make heads or tails with itself, and the confusion surrounding the concept likely causes this.
