You’ve probably seen it as a meme, or on a t-shirt: “Ever since David Bowie died, shit’s been weird.”This week marks five years since Bowie left us, and it’s hard to dispute that it seemed to start a global decline. His passing on January 10, 2016 kicked off the year of Donald Trump’s election and the Brexit vote. In April Prince died suddenly and tragically. It felt like we were living in a world that no longer had room for this kind of visionary, ground-breaking artist. Not much since has offered evidence to the contrary. Unforgettably, the announcement of Bowie’s death (after a lengthy private battle with liver cancer, unknown even to most of those working with him) came just two days after he put out his magnificent album Blackstar, a bracing meditation on mortality released on his 69th birthday. Whatever the fateful combination of intention and coincidence, it made for a flawless exit, and helped secure his reputation even further. Despite—and partially because of—his missteps and inconsistencies over an almost 50-year career, he would remain eternally cool, perpetually modern, unlikely to grow stale or old-fashioned like most of his peers.So now here we are, five years later—and how can we not think of his song “Five Years,” the scene-setting… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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Nothing Has Been the Same Since David Bowie Died. Even His Own Legacy.
