December 2015 single: Magic Shop band, off-Broadway musical, Renck’s bed video
Lazarus is the third track on David Bowie’s Blackstar and the album’s second single, issued as a digital download on 17 December 2015 (ISO/Columbia). The album version runs about 6:22. The video edit is shorter. Same New York team as the title track: Donny McCaslin’s group, Tony Visconti producing, Magic Shop and Human Worldwide rooms. The song also anchors Bowie’s off-Broadway musical Lazarus, developed with Enda Walsh from The Man Who Fell to Earth. The first line is already about heaven. The lyric also brings in scars and a dropped phone. Guitar and sax keep a steady rock beat, while Bowie’s vocal stays close enough for a stage monologue and for a hospital room.
Compared with the ten-minute Blackstar, Lazarus is closer to a single, and it still does not sit in an easy verse-chorus shape. The band keeps a clear beat. McCaslin’s saxophone stays at the edges. The lyric keeps returning to looking up and to leaving. It is less a cryptic collage than a character speaking from a high place. That is why it moved to the musical, and to radio playlists after the news broke. You can hum the shape after one listen. The arrangement still leaves space around the voice.
Johan Renck shot the video in Brooklyn in November 2015: Bowie in the button-eyed bandage on a hospital bed, then at a desk writing. The clip went public on 7 January 2016, one day before the album and three days before Bowie’s death. Renck later said the process felt unmatched. Listeners heard the song as farewell once the news landed. It was Bowie’s last single released in his lifetime. The December 2015 premiere did not present it that way. On the album it sits after the long title track, and the vocal is the clearest statement in the cycle.
The off-Broadway musical of the same name, developed with Enda Walsh from The Man Who Fell to Earth, put the song in a stage monologue as well as on a single. The digital release on 17 December 2015 came before the January album street date. Guitar and sax keep the farewell from turning into a soft ballad.
Look up here, I’m in heaven.
(Opening lyric, Lazarus, Blackstar, ISO/Columbia, 2016)
The track still opens retrospectives of Bowie’s final year. There is the stage character, the sickbed image, and a Magic Shop band that keeps playing while the writer finishes the page. It does not need the ten-minute form of the title song. It uses a first-person line, and a video shot without soft lighting.
The opening line does a lot of the work, and the rest of the record fills in around it. Guitar and sax keep a farewell from turning into a ballad. Lazarus still works as a way into Blackstar, not as a last bow. The first line stands. The rest of the album does the explaining.
François | 13 October 2026
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Simple song, big feeling. Lazarus still does that. Sharing this in the group chat. Expect chaos.
Sofi | 14 October 2026
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I came for David Bowie, stayed for how clean this write-up is. Lazarus hits different after reading. Sharing this in the group chat. Expect chaos. More of this please.
Carmen | 14 October 2026
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My dad played David Bowie in the car. Lazarus is basically my childhood commute. Sharing this in the group chat. Expect chaos.
Léa | 15 October 2026
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Solid chronicle. I forgot how sharp David Bowie sounded on this one.
Chloé | 15 October 2026
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Heard Lazarus a thousand times. This reminded me why it stuck. Might be recency bias but I do not care today.