Bowie Cover of the Week: The Gemini Ritual performs “Lazarus”

More than six years after the release of Blackstar and the death of David Bowie, that album’s title track, as well as “Lazarus” seem to have earned firm spots in the canon of Bowie’s most well regarded songs, at least among people who know Bowie. These two songs seem to pop up more than anything else Bowie did after the 1980s when I search for covers of the week. It probably helps that “Lazarus” is also the title track to the Bowie musical of the same name, however that play has had only a few limited runs, hasn’t had the film-adaptation treatment and seems to have been targeted to a more niche audience than the recent slate of musicals designed as an excuse to perform some singer’s greatest hits. (There’s been recent news that Live Aid will be turned into a musical and will feature someone performing as Bowie, so that might actually reach a broader audience than Lazarus).

Anyway, I like what The Gemini Ritual does with the song. He (they? She? I can’t find any information about the band) gives the song a more tech feel. It almost has an 80s New Wavy-type sound, which is interesting considering how Bowie both anticipated New Wave, then rejected it (“Same old thing in brand new drag comes sweeping into view”). Perhaps assigning more meaning to this cover than intended, since it’s (seemingly) about terminal illness, the intent might have been to hearken back to a long-past style to suggest a slow decline.

The one weakness of this video is that the image is static. That said, I didn’t find any new videos recorded as such this week. There were several clips of live performances, a few “guy with a guitar in his basement” videos, some AI videos and at least one other studio recording with static image. Many covers of “Heroes,” as usual. If anyone is reading this and thinking about making a Bowie cover video, please choose something other than “Heroes.” There are enough “Heroes” covers. Great song, but someone already did it better than you! I guarantee it.

“Lazarus,” on the other hand, has not yet reached cover-over saturation, so based on the quality of the performance and the other available options, this is the cover of the week.

Cover of the week is a weekly feature where I choose among cover videos posted over the course of the last week. While that’s my own hard rule (has to have been posted over the past week), I tend to favor videos created as such, and I prefer covers of more obscure songs. It has to be awfully good for me to choose a “Heroes” cover!