One of the more original Bowie-related projects to come to my attention recently is And We’ll Travel On, which (perhaps ironically) is a mashup album by Lydia Valentino inspired by Bowie’s play, Lazarus. The album combines popular songs drawn from Valentino’s own musical interests with newly recorded performances of dialogue adapted from the play. While it includes vocals by Sophia…

I don’t know how much overlap there is between Bowie fans and fans of Weird Al Yankovic. However big or small that group is, I’m part of it. Weird Al has been making me laugh since the 1970s, and in all that time he never did a parody of a Bowie song. The nearest he got to poking fun of…

John Cameron Mitchell is one of the most distinctive figures in contemporary theater and film. A two-time Tony Award winner, he is best known as the creator and star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the groundbreaking rock musical that helped redefine the possibilities of musical theater. He is also an actor, director, writer, producer, and singer whose work has…

I have developed a slight prejudice against covers of “The Man Who Sold the World” in large part because it is one of the most frequent Bowie covers I come across during my process of evaluating covers of the week (also, in part because some identify it as a Nirvana cover). This is unfair to the song. I liked this…

Con Chrisoulis is a multidisciplinary artist, academic, musician and graphic novelist best known for creating Rebel Rebel, an ongoing graphic biography of Bowie that has been serialized online since 2016 and later collected into print editions. Con has previously appeared on my show to discuss Rebel Rebel, and I wanted to invite him back specifically to talk about Bowie’s early…

Frequent visitors to this blog will be familiar with mashup artist DoM, who, among other things was my very first interview guest. I enjoy DoM’s mashups and frequently post those that include Bowie, like this one, combining “Rebel Rebel” with Tina Turner’s “Steamy Windows.” To my ears, the result sounds less like 1974 glam or 80s pop rock but rather…

Back in the early life of my YouTube channel, I had the chance to speak with Con Chrisoulis, the artist and researcher behind Rebel Rebel, a graphic biography series chronicling the life of David Bowie. Though the original interview focused on Rebel Rebel, I was struck by the enormous amount of research that was involved in developing the text and…

Back in December, I interviewed Pittsburgh duo Canary — Josh M. Slifkin and Helena Nichols — about their creative partnership, their annual Bowie cover tradition, and the enduring influence Bowie has on their work. This past week, Canary posted a video of their cover of “Life on Mars?,” which is my featured cover this week. Their version of “Life on…

Today’s interview features a conversation with legendary graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook, whose work became inseparable from the later career of David Bowie through album designs including Heathen, Reality, The Next Day and Blackstar. Over the course of the discussion, Barnbrook reflects not only on the specific visuals associated with those albums, but on Bowie’s broader artistic philosophy and the unusually…

Coming tomorrow: my interview with Jonathan Barnbrook, the designer behind some of David Bowie’s most striking later-era visuals, including the covers of Heathen, Reality, Blackstar and The Next Day. We discuss Bowie’s deep involvement in the creative process, the meaning behind the album art, and the challenge of creating imagery worthy of Bowie’s constantly evolving artistic identity. Barnbrook also reflects…

In this conversation, I speak with musician Julian Shah-Tayler about his new Bowie tribute album, Where Dreams Are Woven, created in recognition of the 50th anniversary of Station to Station. Julian previously released Bowie-related projects tied to Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs, but this discussion focuses on why Station to Station occupies a particularly important place in Bowie’s artistic evolution…

The linked discussion is an addendum to this week's featured interview on my YouTube show with Jay Michelson. In this short clip, Jay and I discuss how Bowie’s apocalyptic lyrics and themes of civilizational collapse relate to millennialism, messianism, and the esoteric idea of “Homo Superior,” including parallels in Western esotericism. Jay argues that apocalyptic thinking has appeared across human…

There seemed to be more Bowie covers posted over this past week than usual, many of which were quite good. I selected Nehemiah’s cover of “Ziggy Stardust” because it had the right balance of sound quality, something to look at, and, most of all, I really like this artist’s voice. Plus, “Ziggy” is neither “Heroes” nor “Space Oddity” (as usual,…