I heard the news today…* Bowie-inspired “Life on Mars” heads to the stage; Chelsea blooms with Ziggy; Changesonebowie turns 50; Bowie photographers head to Lightroom; David Torn recalls Bowie’s genius; Jonathan Barnbrook arrives on my channel; Brixton Jones covers “Stay,” plus features, profiles, lists AND MORE!
Welcome to my weekly roundup of Bowie news! Read on for summaries of Bowie-related stories that posted this past week, and click on the bolded story names to link to the original articles…
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NEWS
Diane Paulus Will Direct Immersive David Bowie Inspired LIFE ON MARS. American Repertory Theater will inaugurate its new Goel Center for Creativity & Performance next May with Life on Mars, an immersive Bowie-inspired production directed by Diane Paulus and authorized by the Bowie estate. The production continues the expansion of Bowie’s theatrical legacy following Lazarus, the final major stage work completed before Bowie’s death in 2016.
Chelsea in Bloom. Chelsea in Bloom 2026 featured a Bowie-inspired floral display as part of its “Out of this World” theme, which transformed London’s Chelsea neighborhood with large-scale space-themed botanical installations and artwork, and visitors can view the displays throughout the Chelsea district near the RHS Chelsea Flower Show during the festival’s 2026 run.
Changesonebowie Turns 50. Changesonebowie helped transform Bowie from a cult figure into a mainstream international star by compiling key songs from his 1969–1976 creative peak into one of the defining greatest-hits albums of the 1970s. Above find a link to my recent interview with Bowie author Adam Steiner about the album.
BOWIE PHOTOGRAPHERS TO SHARE UNTOLD STORIES. Photographers Geoff MacCormack, Kevin Cummins, Richard Young, Denis O’Regan, Tony McGee, and Chris Duffy will discuss their experiences capturing Bowie’s evolving personas and some of his most iconic images during the Bowie Nights: Behind the Lens event at Lightroom in London on May 26.
In The Boroughs, the Music of David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen Is a Wake-Up Call. Bowie’s “Golden Years” opens the sci-fi series The Boroughs because music supervisor Nora Felder believed the song’s cool, lively, and emotionally layered qualities matched the retired protagonists, and her prior work licensing Bowie’s “Heroes” for Stranger Things helped her secure approval from Bowie’s estate.
Music royalty-backed bond deals have surged since 2020. Bowie’s pioneering 1997 royalty securitization deal helped lay the groundwork for a music royalty-backed bond market that has grown to $12.9 billion since 2020, though KBRA expects issuance to decline by about 25 percent in 2026 due largely to industry consolidation.
Publishing deal includes hits from David Bowie. A reciprocal sub-publishing deal between Mushroom Music Publishing and Bucks Music Group will see the companies represent each other in Australia/New Zealand and the UK respectively, with Bucks’ catalogue including works by Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Brian Eno, and Black Sabbath alongside Mushroom’s extensive Australasian roster.
SpaceX’s investor pitch reads like a sci-fi manifesto. SpaceX’s IPO filing presents the company’s ambitions in sci-fi terms while referencing Bowie’s “Starman” through the mannequin astronaut launched into space aboard Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster during the Falcon Heavy test flight.
Will Rogano finally reopen? A major UK Supreme Court case over nearly £1 million in damages tied to Glasgow’s famed Rogano restaurant, once frequented by figures including Bowie and Henry Kissinger, was abruptly settled the night before a highly anticipated hearing against Zara founder Amancio Ortega’s interests.
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FEATURES AND REFLECTIONS
Bowie’s Haunting Cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”. Bowie opened the 2001 Concert for New York City with a stripped-down performance of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” on an Omnichord, using the song’s quiet patriotism and emotional restraint to create one of the evening’s most moving moments.
David Bowie & Trans Androgyny. Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era is viewed as a revolutionary challenge to traditional gender norms because the androgynous alien rock star from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars rejected rigid binary ideas of identity and inspired many in the trans community to see self-creation and gender expression as limitless.
Almanac Music: 33 1/3 Reasons Why – Aladdin Sane (or just a bit fed up with it all?). Aladdin Sane channels Bowie’s rebellious creative attitude through glam, blues, cabaret, and rock influences, with “The Jean Genie” and “Panic in Detroit” providing inspiration and emotional release amid frustration, disillusionment, and admiration for Bowie’s brilliance and contradictions.
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PROFLIES
David Torn. Experimental guitarist David Torn described watching Bowie spontaneously write the lyrics to “Sunday” during the Heathen sessions as a transcendent moment that revealed the intensity of Bowie’s creative focus and improvisational genius.
Dave Grohl. Dave Grohl recalled that Bowie politely declined to collaborate on a movie soundtrack before jokingly ending the exchange with the message, “Well, that’s settled then — now f–k off.”
Moon Walker. Moon Walker’s Harry Springer built a large following through TikTok while developing a politically charged, glam- and fuzz-rock sound influenced by Bowie, Marc Bolan, Jack White, Black Sabbath, and Talking Heads rather than mainstream pop trends.
Toney Springer. Wild T recalls Bowie inviting him to play on Black Tie White Noise as he brings his blues-rock trio to Banff during a western Canada tour.
Holger Hampf. Mini design chief Holger Hampf says he wants to revive the brand’s past collaborations with cultural figures like Bowie, The Beatles and Kate Moss as part of preserving Mini’s identity as a positive, lifestyle-oriented brand rooted in the creative energy and celebrity culture historically associated with Britain and the Mini marque.
The post-Bowie career of Mick Ronson. Mick Ronson remained an influential guitarist, producer, and arranger after leaving Bowie and the Spiders from Mars in 1973, building a substantial career through collaborations with artists including Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Morrissey, and Ian Hunter while carrying forward the distinctive guitar sound associated with Ziggy Stardust.
William Boyd. William Boyd’s wide-ranging literary career includes the Nat Tate hoax, in which he and Bowie successfully convinced parts of the art world in 1998 that the fictional abstract expressionist painter was real.
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THIS WEEK IN THIS BLOG
May 17: Last Week’s News
May 18: David Bowie Cover of the Week: Brixton Jones covers “Stay”
May 19: Drive-In Saturday Tuesday Movie Review: Top Gun Double Feature
May 20: 10 Rock Stars Mentioned In Bowie Songs (plus a few bonus tracks)
May 21: Reflecting on listening to Bowie’s albums in order
May 22: “Bad Dance” DoM’s latest Mashup
May 22: Jonathan Barnbrook preview
May 23: Designer Jonathan Barnbrook on working with Bowie
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LISTS
The 10 Best Albums of the 2010s, Ranked. Blackstar stands as an extraordinary late-career achievement in which Bowie confronted mortality through music created during his secret battle with cancer, culminating in a final artistic triumph released just days before his death.
Every song on the Rivals season two soundtrack. The second season of Rivals uses a soundtrack filled with 1980s songs, including Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” to reinforce the show’s nostalgic setting and upper-class social drama.
Five songs where the backing singers were better than the lead. Bowie made a surprise guest appearance on Arcade Fire’s “Reflektor” in 2013 after visiting the band in the studio, contributing understated backing vocals that nevertheless added a distinctive presence to the track.
10 ‘classic’ songs that are way worse than you remember. Despite the deeper meaning Bowie and Nile Rodgers associated with “Let’s Dance,” the song is an overly safe and commercially driven track that lacks the artistic strength of Bowie’s best work.
Six legendary musicians Keith Richards can’t stand. Keith Richards dismissed much of Bowie’s work as overly focused on image and posing rather than music, singling out “Changes” as the only song from Hunky Dory he particularly remembered, while still later describing Bowie as a good friend and a true original.
3 Early Folk Gems by David Bowie You Might Have Missed. Bowie explored folk music early in his career, recording songs that revealed a lesser-known side of his artistry before his later reinventions in glam rock, soul, funk, and electronic music.
Historical Figures You’d Ride Shotgun With. A Jalopnik reader described Bowie as a uniquely enjoyable and fascinating companion for a road trip, praising him as a “weird and wonderful” figure whose company would be hard to top.
The 25 best Glam Rock albums. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars established Bowie as the defining glam rock figure of the early 1970s through its androgynous extraterrestrial persona, theatrical style, rock ’n’ roll pastiche, and the success of “Starman,” while influencing later movements including punk, goth, New Romanticism, and Britpop.
The weirdest music videos ever made. Bowie’s video for “Loving the Alien” embraces surreal, chaotic imagery through blue makeup, strange temple rituals, stone figures, hospital scenes, electrocution, and an unhappy marriage storyline.
3 Vocal-Driven Songs That Shaped the Sound of the 1980s. Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” helped define 1980s art-pop and influenced new wave and post-punk through its theatrical vocal style and experimental sound, becoming a No. 1 hit in the UK in 1980 while narrowly missing the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.
4 Near-Perfect Classic Rock Songs That Broke Every Rule by Becoming Masterpieces. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey profoundly inspired Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” with the film’s sense of isolation and cosmic scale helping him create Major Tom and fuse avant-garde ideas with mainstream rock.
Elvis Costello’s ultimate list of the 500 greatest albums ever recorded. Costello’s deep engagement with music history and underground influences shaped both his career and his expansive recommendations to fans, including Bowie albums such as Hunky Dory, Station To Station, Low, and Heroes among his 500 favorite records.
The greatest artist of the 1970s, according to Noel Gallagher. Gallagher admired Bowie not for his glam image but for his artistic ambition and relentless evolution, particularly praising “Fashion” and viewing Bowie’s late-1970s and early-1980s work as surpassing that of all his contemporaries.
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CHURNALISM
This section separates genuine Bowie news and original writing from recycled “churnalism” stories with vague click-bait headlines that often repeat familiar information but may still be of interest if readers have not seen them before.
Churn of the Week: The 1989 album that deeply hurt David Bowie. The last few weeks I have unofficially been highlighting (lowlighting?) a story of this kind that epitomizes what’s wrong with what I’ve been calling “churnamism.” This week, it’s this imitation article that seems to have been the product of a story being rewritten so often as to have become factually inaccurate. Perhaps an older story was simply fed into AI and the result was never fact-checked, or maybe not even read. The premise of this one is that Bowie was deeply hurt by the poor reception to Tin Machine because he saw the heavier, more adventurous project as a creative rebirth after the commercial compromises of the 1980s, and later said the disappointment was so painful that the band never made another album. Yet the 1989 Tin Machine album was followed up by Tin Machine II, as well as the little-known (but nonetheless real) Tin Machine live album, Oy Vey Baby.
How Hunky Dory saved David Bowie’s career. Hunky Dory transformed Bowie from a struggling and uncertain artist into a major creative force by revealing a fully realized songwriting voice and giving him, for the first time, a substantial and enthusiastic audience.
Bowie’s Favorite (and Least Favorite) David Bowie Songs. Bowie identified songs such as “Life On Mars?,” “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing,” and “The Bewlay Brothers” among his personal favorites, while expressing strong dislike for tracks including “Too Dizzy” and “The Laughing Gnome,” criticizing Never Let Me Down as a whole and at times distancing himself even from “Space Oddity” despite later acknowledging it as “a very good song.”
“Quicksand’”: The 1971 David Bowie song inspired by Buddhism, the occult and Nazis. Bowie’s “Quicksand” stands out on Hunky Dory as an introspective and vulnerable song that channels his anxieties about identity and artistic ambition through references to Buddhism, the occult, Nazi Germany, mortality, and Nietzschean philosophy.
The 1973 show Jeff Beck wanted to erase from history. Jeff Beck viewed Bowie as a singular and constantly evolving artist, but later regretted his filmed performance of “The Jean Genie” with Bowie because he did not want audiences seeing the equipment and techniques behind his guitar sound.
When Bowie Discovered One of Rock’s Most Legendary Guitarists. Bowie helped launch Stevie Ray Vaughan to international prominence after discovering the guitarist at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival and recruiting him to play on Let’s Dance, where Vaughan’s blues-driven style became a defining part of the album’s sound.
The singer who always inspired Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger viewed Bowie as a fearless and transformative original whose theatricality, reinvention and willingness to blur identity ultimately influenced Jagger’s own evolution as a performer and public figure.
“Let’s Dance’”: the worst decision David Bowie ever made. Although Let’s Dance turned Bowie into a massive commercial pop star with enduring hits like “Modern Love,” “China Girl,” and “Let’s Dance,” the album is viewed as a creatively destabilizing success that conflicted with his instinct for reinvention and may have contributed to the artistic struggles that followed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The 1970 album that made David Bowie depressed. Bowie considered John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band a “rivetingly depressing” masterpiece whose raw emotional honesty, anger, and psychological introspection reflected Lennon’s attempt to process grief and personal turmoil after The Beatles.
The new wave band David Bowie was desperate to work with. Bowie’s groundbreaking work from “Space Oddity” onward helped shape alternative and underground music, while his fascination with unconventional new wave acts led him to admire and seek to produce Devo because of their radical deconstruction of rock conventions.
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And with that, “we’ve finished our news…”*
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*“I’ve heard the news today” is Bowie’s adaptation of the Beatles lyric, which is heard in “Young Americans.” **“We’ve finished our news” is a line from, “Oh You Pretty Things”