The LCD Soundsystem’s Bowie tribute song, “Black Screen” (2017)

Far Out Magazine seems to publish at least one Bowie related story per week, many of which inspire a blog post on this site. A recent story explained how the song, “Black Screen,” by The LCD Soundsystem is a tribute to Bowie. Band frontman James Murphy worked with Bowie on Bowie’s Blackstar and, according to the story was going to collaborate with him on what would become this song, but Bowie died before he could make his contribution. I take it that the song was in its infancy or perhaps not even that, but turned into a tribute.

I don’t want to simply reproduce the Far Out story, so click here to read it.

To me, the song sounds sounds more related to Low than Blackstar. Having never heard it before, I was thinking it was an instrumental for about the first minute. The lyrics are not obviously about Bowie, but are obviously about loss. The narrator is essentially stunned that someone was here and now isn’t, as he reflects on email trails and “watching images from the station.” That word, “station,” followed by “Earth one from satellites” seem evocative of Bowie (“Station to Station,” Earthlings “Looking for Satellites,”). And the whole concept of, “you can be anywhere on the black screen” is a more somber version of the dynamic expressed in Bowie’s “TVC-15.” But again, the lyrics make no direct references to Bowie and had I simply stumbled across the song, well, I probably would have noticed it as having been influenced by Low, but I wouldn’t necessarily concluded that it was a Bowie tribute.

But then, Bowie excelled at that type of ambiguity. So it works.