Ablack star is defined as something that has presence and mass but isn’t actually there. The same could be said of Bowie these days. Without a public appearance in over a decade, pop’s master recluse has brilliantly massaged his mythology so that no living organism on the planet remains untouched by his influence.
However, the hysteria around 2013’s The Next Day meant the fact that it was a bog standard Bowie album went largely unnoticed; had it arrived three years after 2003’s Reality, you suspect fewer critics would have been foaming at the mouth.