Breathe Magazine Issue 072 Back Issue

David Bowie, Madonna, Kylie, Beyoncé. They are all pop stars, all creative, all champions of reinvention. People who tore up their public image and presented the world with a new version of themselves, sometimes provocative, occasionally challenging and, it being the celebrity arena, almost always a statement. A rebrand, some might say. Privately, perhaps they remained – or remain – the same, though this would be rare.
Underneath the public persona or alter ego, pop stars are, after all, like all famous folk, mere humans. And humans evolve and grow, adjusting priorities, intentions and dreams as time goes by and experiences rack up. There’ll be some who stay close to a blueprint set by their childhood self – a desire to seek adventure fulfilled by travel, a wish to care for others realised in the medical profession, a longing to find meaning achieved through art or literature – but many will wander.
This might be through choice or because life events, welcome or not, invite a rethink of long-held values and whether they still hold true. Perhaps adventure is now way down the list of priorities, with artistic expression in the top spot, and caring for others and stability jockeying for position in the middle. The changed order might be dramatic, even strange, or reveal only subtle tweaks to that childhood blueprint. Less reinvention, more incremental adjustments.
So, not Ziggy Stardust/David Bowie territory or one of Madonna’s many iterations. It’s not a rebrand. But to paraphrase one of Bowie’s lyrics, nonetheless, ‘time may change you, but you can’t trace time’.