Yeah yeah, 2016 was a shitshow. 2016 was the worst year of mine and many others’ lives, so far. I got arthritis in both of my knees and Bernie Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton, who lost to a cartoon fascist television tycoon with the vocabulary of a 5 year old and the integrity of Eric Cartman.
But something amazing happened in 2016. Two of the greatest songwriters of all time both recorded albums about death and dying, immediately dying after releasing them. David Bowie, iconic musical shape-shifter who proved his songwriting prowess with songs like “Life On Mars,” “Space Oddity,” and “Heroes,” released the stark Blackstar on January 8th and died on January 10th. Leonard Cohen, the brilliant wordsmith behind “Hallelujah,” “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and “Suzanne,” released the mournful You Want It Darker on October 21st and died on November 7th.
Only a handful of people knew of David Bowie’s terminal cancer while he was working on Blackstar. David Bowie spent the last years of his life living in an extremely private manner, and the end was no exception. The world was in shock, I was in shock, when David Bowie died. But his longtime collaborator and producer Tony Visconti clarified soon after that Bowie’s death was not a surprise, that this was all part of the plan. Bowie made this album as a final album, a swan song, a death rattle, on purpose. That suddenly made the whole thing way less depressing. Bowie was able to wrap up his incredible artistic output with a neat bow, masterminding all aspects of his career until the very end and beyond. The album existed publically in its pure, ambiguous form for only two days before lines like “look up here I’m in heaven… Dropped my cellphone down below / Ain’t that just like me?” suddenly made a lot more sense. His death made the final song, “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” that much more heartbreaking.
To many people, Leonard Cohen’s death came as no surprise. He famously admitted that he was “ready to die” in a New Yorker interview around the time of his album release. He also said in a published letter to his muse Marianne, while she was on her deathbed a couple months before the album release, “I think I will follow you very soon.” “I’m ready my lord,” Leonard Cohen delivers in a croonish growl, the only sound he seemed to be able to muster, on the first song of the album. “I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game,” he sings on another song.
Leonard Cohen is known for soft acoustic songs, but You Want It Darker is remarkably quiet and soft even for a Leonard Cohen album. It is calm and subdued, and gives the listener the impression of bending down to hear someone whisper their last words. David Bowie, flamboyant method acting character-creator, king of glam and theatrical vignettes in song form, decided for his last album to be a ghastly, ghoulish affair. He played his dying note with some weird, sparse, apocalyptic jazz group, wiggling and jazz handsing its way through death itself to tribal drumming in odd time signatures and the snaking death howl of a demented horn solo.
Both albums have moments of humor and levity, but on the whole are unblinking reports on the abyss: self aware, candid, and introspective on the darkest imaginable theme. Heartfelt and honest songs about aging, dying, and death are incredibly rare, and here are two albums worth of them. Most famous songwriters lose their spark and drive to write compelling, honest personal songs by the time they turn 35. These harrowing and haunting are a welcome and important addition to the world songbook, especially because we are all going to die.
