Blackstar (song)
2015 song by David Bowie
"Blackstar" (stylised as "★") is a song by the English rock musician David Bowie. It was released as the lead single from his twenty-sixth and final studio album of the same name on 19 November 2015. "Blackstar" peaked at number 61 on the UK singles chart, number 70 on the French Singles Chart and number 78 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Blackstar" received both the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song and the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance at the 59th Grammy Awards. At 9:57, it was the longest song to enter the Billboard Hot 100 charts, overtaking Harry Chapin's "A Better Place to Be (Live)", until Tool broke the record in 2019 with "Fear Inoculum".
Production and composition
"Blackstar" is an art rock, avant-garde jazz, progressive rock, electronic, and baroque song. Also described as an "avant jazz sci-fi torch song", it features a "drum and bass rhythm, [a] two-note tonal melody with hints of Gregorian chant, [and] shifting time signatures". In the bluesy slow middle section, the song shifts from an acid house-inspired groove to a languid, R&B-flavored interlude.
Similarities have been drawn between Bowie's song and Elvis Presley's song "Black Star" which contains the lyrics "When a man sees his black star, he knows his time...has come." The repeated line "at the centre of it all" is also present in Bowie's 2002 single "Slow Burn" and appears to originate in Aleister Crowley's The Book of Lies.
The song was originally over eleven minutes long, but after learning that iTunes would not post singles over ten minutes in length, Bowie and Tony Visconti edited it down to 9:57, making it Bowie's second-longest track behind "Station to Station".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Blackstar (song)” is 2015 song by David Bowie. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Blackstar, song and David, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “2015 song by David Bowie” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21531669. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2015, 2019 and 2002.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Blackstar (song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.