The Last Mixed Tape

David Bowie’s Blackstar is often described as a farewell album, a final goodbye released just days before his death in January 2016. But that framing misses something essential.

Rather than offering closure, Blackstar feels like a deliberate act of design. Created while Bowie was privately facing terminal illness, the album refuses nostalgia, embraces abstraction, and speaks in symbols rather than confession. It is not a diary of decline, but an attempt to retain authorship over how the work and the artist would exist after death.

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White examines Blackstar as part of a wider artistic tradition. Drawing connections between Bowie and figures such as Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath, and Francis Bacon, this essay explores how artists have confronted mortality not as an ending, but as material shaping disappearance into art.

This piece considers what it means for an artist to live on beyond the body, how pop culture reshapes legacies, and why Blackstar remains one of the most singular final statements in modern music.

The Last Mixed Tape is hosted by Stephen White, and is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.