In a majority of those videos, she plays up her sex-symbol image to the hilt. Of course, she announced the secret release to her 8 million Instagram followers with a 15-second video trailer that concluded with the words “available now,” but why quibble over details?Īlas, rather than let her music speak for itself, Beyoncé simultaneously released videos for each of the 14 songs on “Beyoncé,” which she calls a “visual album.” Then, she threw in three extra videos for good measure. Near year’s end, Beyoncé, 32, embraced Bowie’s approach – in a manner – releasing her self-titled new album, which she had also secretly recorded, quietly in the dead of night. In Bowie’s hands, square became cool and the white square quickly became an Instagram favorite and an artful reminder that a wily veteran like David Bowie can capture the attention of social media while keeping his distance from social media. Witness the cover of “The Next Day,” in which Bowie’s visage is obscured by a large white square, which is placed over the center of his photo on his classic 1977 album, “Heroes.” That square quickly turned into a viral meme on the Internet, with fans around the globe posing with white squares. Now, Bowie prefers to appear, almost phantom-like, from out of the shadows, then quickly return to them, the better to fire up the imagination of his listeners. It was an especially bold move for an artist who once seemed to have a new image every time he, or his audience, blinked. Moreover, in an age where image is everything and style is substance for far too many creatively anemic performers, Bowie triumphed by rejecting image. The payoff was in the music “The Next Day” is such a strong album that it has touched different generations, earning enthusiastic praise from such longtime Bowie admirers as Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and from such younger, twentysomething fans as Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and Chris Baio. In spite of Bowie’s silence, and because of it, fans were atwitter with excitement about his unexpected return to songwriting and recording. No wonder his longtime producer and collaborator Tony Visconti tweeted that he was “so relieved to talk about the new DB album after two years of silence.” Against great odds, Bowie made “The Next Day” in secret and kept it a secret. hype machine that has become mandatory for pop artists, large and small, critically acclaimed (Arcade Fire) or not (Bieber). Instead, Bowie wisely let his very fine music speak for itself and sidestepped the P.R. The few videos he has released for songs from the album are cloaked in a willful air of mystery. He has yet to perform a concert anywhere. campaign to promote the single or the subsequent album. No press release or fanfare of any kind announced the release of “Where Are We Now?” and Bowie did not participate in any P.R. Not coincidentally, some of the album’s best songs address issues of mortality, none more evocatively than “Heat,” a Scott Walker-influenced lament that also ranks as one of the most gripping anti-war songs in recent memory. That video was very quietly released in the darkness of night on Jan. “The Next Day,” Bowie’s first new studio album in a decade, was preceded by his video for the hauntingly melancholic song “Where Are We Now?” Rather, it’s how Bowie made a stealth-like return that Beyoncé appeared to emulate, albeit with very different approaches and results. What ties Bowie and Beyoncé together isn’t the quality of their music – his epitomizes art, hers epitomizes commerce thinly disguised as art (and both he and she are masters of their respective forms). That seems no more likely than the megalomaniacal West’s end-of-year, on-stage vow that he wouldn’t say anything controversial “for a long time. With no apologies whatsoever to Miley Cyrus (do the twerk!) and Robin Thicke (be a jerk!), or to Justin Bieber (ditto) and Kanye West (double ditto), no two artists defined the opposite ends of the pop music spectrum in 2013 like David Bowie and Beyoncé.įor the record, twerking dates back to at least 1993 when New Orleans DJ Jubilee’s stick-your-derrière-in-the-aire-and-shake-it-like-you-just-don’t-care song “Do the Jubilee All” featured the refrain: “Twerk, baby, twerk, baby, twerk, twerk, twerk.” Also, for the record, Thicke’s controversial “Blurred Lines” video – which co-stars model and San Dieguito Academy alum Emily Ratajkowski and appropriates music from vintage songs by both Marvin Gaye and George Clinton – earned Thicke the 2013 “Sexist of the Year” award from a coalition of women’s groups, who sent him a voucher to buy a copy of Aretha Franklin’s recording of “Respect.”īieber, after a year of real and contrived controversies (which he briefly addressed at his San Diego concert), announced his retirement in late December.
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