Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, your alienation effect of music news and

criticism. I'm your host Ben Ratliff.

Every man has a black star, a black star over his shoulder over his shoulder and when a man sees his black star he knows his time, his time, his time has come.

Black star, don't shine on me black star.

Black star.

Keep behind on me black star.

That's a song by Elvis Presley called Black Star.

And it was brought to my attention by our guest today, Simon Critchley.

Hi Simon.

Hi, who is a philosopher and a writer and wrote a book about David Bowie a couple of years ago,

which we'll get to in a second.

But the subject today is love and death

regarding David Bowie and his work but the Elvis Presley song, Black Star, this was sent to you by a friend in England.

This has not been noticed that widely, as far as I can tell, by poking around on the internet.

Do you think the people are beginning to understand this song is one of the, you know, final clues around Bowie's death or one of his you know messages? I think it must be a clue. I mean you know he liked Elvis everybody liked Elvis.

It's it wasn't a song that was released. No. It's clear in the song that, you know,

everyone's born under a black star and that black star is death.

So the album is under the sign of death.

And so the reference to the illusion to Elvis kind of makes that pretty clear.

The song Black Star by Elvis is an alternate take. It wasn't released until the 90s I think.

It was done for a film called Flaming Star the version that people

know is a song called Flaming Star which has slightly different words you know know, slightly altered, but this was the first draft, the first version.

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