David Bowie | Space Oddity | The Man Who Sold the World | Hunky Dory
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars | Aladdin Sane | Pin Ups | Diamond Dogs | Young Americans
Station to Station | Low | "Heroes" | Lodger | Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) | Let's Dance | Tonight | Never Let Me Down
Tin Machine | Black Tie White Noise | The Buddha of Suburbia | Outside | Earthling | 'hours...' | The Next Day | ★
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- Awesome Music: Mixing with Dying Moment of Awesome, the album is a perfect closure to Bowie's life.
- Even Better Sequel: Compared to his last album, The Next Day, which was already considered an improvement over Reality. It's also considered to be on-par with, if not better than some of, his work from The '70s.
- Fridge Brilliance:
- The album title. Journalists pointed out that the title references a "black star lesion", which is mostly found in cancer patients. Fans, however, also pointed out that there is a thing known as a black star in astronomy, that releases indefinitely. Considering Bowie's shtick of space, it wouldn't be surprising. It is also a reference to an unreleased Elvis Presley song that talks about how everyone has a "black star" and when you see it you know you'll die.
- While many have decried the album's heavy dynamic range compression, with each track having audible clipping and the whole product coming in at a dynamic range of just 5, it starts to seem less like incompetent mastering on the record label's part and more subtle symbolism once you realize that "DR5" is also short for death receptor 5
, a surface protein that mediates apoptosis, or cell death. Even more, monoclonal antibodies targeting DR5 receptors are being tested as an experimental treatment for cancer patients.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- Any of the album's many references to death, given that we now know they were a reference to Bowie's own. In the music video of "Lazarus", he locks himself in a closet — one would easily see it as a coffin or a gateway to the afterlife.
- After the album was released, Visconti revealed that Bowie made demo recordings of five additional songs after making this album, and called Visconti a week before his death saying he wanted to make another album. ★ ends on a peaceful note, but the fact that Bowie obviously felt he hadn't accomplished everything he was meant to accomplish in life when he died just compounds the tragedy behind the album.
- The line "Where the fuck did Monday go?" on "Girl Loves Me"; Bowie died on a Sunday night, so Monday had truly gone for him, and the world was left to grieve that day.
- In the music video of "Lazarus", Bowie is seen on a table contemplating what he should write. While "Lazarus" is a powerful song about his passing, that scene becomes a lot more depressing when you learn Bowie had decided to do a follow-up to ★, meaning he still wasn't ready to leave.
- Heartwarming Moments: The entire album, when it isn't a Tear Jerker, is this. It's Bowie's final goodbye to everyone and turning his death into a work of art. It was his Grand Finale and Swan Song to those who were with him, whether to the end or just getting on board before his passing.
- Nightmare Fuel: The first two music videos for the album, especially the title track's. The final, posthumous one, "I Can't Give Everything Away", is more tragic than terrifying.
- Tear Jerker: Given the circumstances surrounding the album, most of the material can qualify as this for some people.
- Five words: "I Can't Give Everything Away". No less of a figure than Henry Rollins said that listening to the song "makes me want to chase after him as the song fades away, pleading with him not to go." The bittersweet sound, musical callbacks to Low, and lyrics about Bowie going to Face Death with Dignity brought almost every fan (even non-fans) who heard it to tears. It is more tragically fitting that it's the closing track to the album (and if you wanna see it further, Bowie's final song he made before his death, not counting the future posthumous releases like No Plan).
- Five words: "I Can't Give Everything Away". No less of a figure than Henry Rollins said
