David Bowie breaks silence with 42 words on ‘The Next Day’

David Bowie has finally broken his silence on his comeback album The Next Day.

American novelist Ricky Moody, writing for literary website The Rumpus, persuaded Bowie to comment – in a manner – on his album, after asking for a “work flow diagram” explaining his creative approach.

Moody writes: “…I wanted to think about [the album] in light of what he was thinking about it, I wanted to understand the lexicon of The Next Day, and so I simply asked if he would provide this list of words about his album, assuming, like everyone else waving madly trying to get his attention, that there was not a chance in hell that I would get this list, because who the fuck am I, some novelist killing time writing occasionally about music, and yet astonishingly the list appeared, and it appeared without further comment, which is really excellent, and exactly in the spirit of this album, and the list is far better than I could ever have hoped, and it’s exactly like Bowie, at least in my understanding of him, impulsive, intuitive, haunted, astringent, and incredibly ambitious in the matter of the arts…”

Bowie recorded a new version of Tin Machine’s “I Can’t Read” for the 1997 movie adaptation of Moody’s novel, The Ice Storm.

The full list of words Bowie sent to Moody is as follows:

Effigies

Mystification

Meanwhile, Bowie was recently spotted wearing long brown religious robes alongside actor Gary Oldman on set for the video for the third single taken from the album – the title track, “The Next Day”.