“Black Tie White Noise” versus “I Can’t Breath” Different Artistic Approaches to American Racial Injustice

This blog and its affiliated YouTube channel are centered around David Bowie, but my conversation with Maria ‘Masha’ Alyokhina of Pussy Riot is a departure—one that feels urgent and necessary. While Bowie and Pussy Riot never crossed paths, their work intersects through shared themes of authoritarianism, oppression, and societal injustice. Now, as Masha and Pussy Riot embark on their North American “Riot Days” tour, they aren’t just exposing the brutality of Putin’s Russia—they’re issuing a warning to the United States about the creeping rise of authoritarianism here, urging audiences to resist and take action. Interviewing Masha felt important not only because of her own story but because her activism embodies the struggles Bowie often depicted from a distance. For more information on the tour, click HERE. And come back tomorrow to see the interview.

There are thematic connections between Bowie and Pussy Riot. One of the more striking examples is how they both addressed American racial strife in song and video. Bowie and Iman were in Los Angeles in 1992 when riots broke out in response to video footage of Rodney King, an African American motorist, being beaten by police, or, more precisely, the acquittal of the cops who did the deed. Outrage over the verdict intersected with tensions between Black and Korean communities in the City. The violence that erupted lasted six days. 63 people died, thousands were injured and untold millions of property damage ensued.

(Click on the image to link to the Bowie video)

Bowie’s artistic response was the song, “Black Tie White Noise.” And I have to say– it isn’t my favorite Bowie song. That said, between the song itself and the video, Bowie put his powers to work to make one of his most overt social statements. Bowie was at his best when he was being obtuse. Like many of his great songs, this one seems to be straightforward but really isn’t at all. Is he being critical of someone like himself who was largely shielded not only from the riots but the conditions that sparked them with lines like, “Getting my facts from a Benetton ad”? I mean, that sounds like a statement directed at limousine liberalism, about an overly-idealized world of mythical racial harmony, right? Yet the song comes back to, “I look into your eyes and I know you won’t kill me,” as if, deep down inside the Benetton ads were right. Though, then again “there will be blood, no doubt about it.” At the end of the day, the song’s message was that of Rodney King’s– “can’t we all just get along.” It seemingly takes a soft touch to a hard issue (though, as I’ll get to, Bowie’s approach is more nuanced than it might first appear).

The video adds some heft. Bowie, looking at his most conventionally good-looking, is singing and playing his sax in an expensive-looking, flashy blue suit. Although they seldom appear in the same frame together, he plays off singer Al B. Sure, who is Black. They start out in different places but end up together professing confidence that they wouldn’t kill each other. Along the way, we see glimpses of intimidating-looking police, a dead body, a worried-looking Korean grocer, a black boy wearing a balaclava and scenes from an urban blight tour of Los Angeles.

Fast forward to 2014 and another incident between police and a black man led to the death of Eric Garner, this time in New York City. Despite Bowie’s efforts to subtly draw artistic attention to the issue by flashing an image of police in his video, the problem of police violence against black men had not vanished from American society. Garner was subdued by seven cops while illegally selling loose cigarettes, was pinned to the ground, placed in an illegal choke hold and died while repeating — eleven times– “I can’t breathe.” As with the King incident, this too was captured on video. But this time what erupted were largely (to my recollection, actually entirely) peaceful, though intense protests. Masha Alyokhina was in the United States at the time, having been released from prison in Russia, and joined in the protests (we discuss this in Saturday’s interview). And in terms of their artistic response, Pussy Riot decided to be a little more direct than Bowie.

Masha and fellow Pussy Riot-member and former Russian prisoner Nadezhda Tolokonnikova released the video for “I Can’t Breathe” in 2015 as a protest song dedicated to Garner. The video, which is embedded here features Masha and Tolokonnikova buried alive in black dirt while wearing Russian police uniforms. The image of these two women being buried alive is arresting and far more unnerving than Bowie in his blue suit. This is happening against vocals performed by members of two Russian acts: Scofferlane and Jack Wood. “It’s getting dark in New York City; I need to catch my breath” are words that take on urgency while watching two human beings being covered with black dirt. The final image is of packed ground, with shovels atop new filled-in hole, beneath which are the two bodies. But the final words are Garners’, as read by punk musician Richard Hell. And the very last words are, “I can’t breathe.” There’s no subtlety here.

That device, of working Eric Garner’s words into the song, reminds me of the spoken word portion of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City,” in which a fictional new-arrival to New York unwittingly finds himself in trouble with the law and ultimately imprisoned. But also, by using Garner’s actual words the song lets the history fill in a lot of the blanks, in a way not unlike other socially conscious music that reference real-life events to highlight injustice, much like Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio,” and U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Oddly, because the tone of the song is far more upbeat, I also think of Will.i.am’s “Yes We Can,” which uses a speech by Barack Obama’s to inspire civic engagement and social consciousness.

All of these songs are about more than the specific historical incidents referenced, but the historical references brings with them more meaning than would otherwise fit comfortably in song lyrics. Bowie, too, does something somewhat similar in “Black Tie White Noise” by name dropping other songs— “We Are the World,” “I’ve Got You, Babe,” “What’s Going On” and “We Shall Overcome.” I think what he was going for by mentioning the first song, which was recorded by just about every big artist in the 80s other than Bowie, was something like the reference to the Benetton ad — a superficial expression of ersatz social consciousness, in contrast to a more earnest artistic expression such as “What’s Going On,” or an organic song tied to genuine struggle like, “We Shall Overcome.” As for the Sonny and Cher reference— who knows? It’s Bowie.

Bowie’s jumble of references don’t end with much of a sense of hope. The refrain, and last words of the song are, “putting on the black tie, cranking out the white noise,” evoking, again, a detached separation between comfortable and oblivious wealthy people living within eyeshot of the fires of riot. Perhaps ironically, since their song is more confrontational and shocking, “Pussy Riot’s is actually more hopeful than Bowie’s: “Some fairness might be found; From ashes of his death.” Beyond “Black Tie White Noise,” Bowie is not very optimistic about the human condition. In song after song, the group is always wrong, collective action never works, and revolutions never end up well. At least not for Bowie, whose one arrest was on pot charges in Rochester, New York and involved no abuse at the hands of the police of any country. Ultimately, though, while musically darker and angrier, Pussy Riot is all about hope. At least that’s Masha’s message. Silence, she tells me, does not mean safety.

Pussy Riot’s North American tour does not come at a moment of victory. Incidents of police abusing black men continued and erupted into worldwide protest in 2020 after the death of George Floyd. But today, in 2025, we haven’t finally figured it out. Instead, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered the removal of Black Lives Matter Plaza signage and street markings, including the giant yellow “Black Lives Matter” lettering on 16th Street, amid threats of encroachment from Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress. Trump ordered the Justice Department to halt all open civil rights investigations into police departments, including those found to have committed systemic violations, effectively ending federal oversight and enforcement of reforms in agencies across the country. And he even, as he terrorizes most immigrants, established a special refugee program called “Mission South Africa” that prioritizes granting asylum to white Afrikaners from South Africa, despite his broader ban on most refugees from other countries.

Pussy Riot’s North American tour couldn’t be more timely. The United States is grappling with many of the same forces Bowie addressed in the abstract. But the present reality is concrete, as Trump dismantles civil rights protections, shuts down accountability mechanisms, and establishes what has to be called racism as federal policy. Masha’s message is that injustice must be confronted, and that the fight against oppression is far from over.

And to hear Masha’s voice, come back tomorrow for the interview…