Not a cover! Billy Mowbray performs “Valentine’s Day”

This is a bizarre video. The audio is Bowie’s studio recording of the 2013 song, “Valentine’s Day,” which I have always interpreted as being about a school shooter. Here, an actor named Billy Mowbray portrays Ziggy Stardust lip-syncing the song in a school dance setting where the events of the song play out as someone poisoning the punch. After the song, incongruously, Mowbray mouths along with Bowie’s voice saying that this would be “the last show we’ll ever do,” which he famously said at the end of a concert in 1973 that was documented in what would become Ziggy Stardust: the Motion Picture.

So OK, this is a tribute to Bowie by a group of actors who can’t themselves sing (?). Why not?

And although the song is not actually about the Valentine’s Day holiday, happy Valentine’s Day.