Watch the posthumously released video for David Bowie’s ‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’
It’s more than fitting that the first posthumous video for a David Bowie song would depict a psychedelic shot through the cosmos.
“I Can’t Give Everything Away,” a standout track from his final album, “Blackstar,” gets a gentle lyric video that recalls vintage animation and science fiction, and alludes to death while embracing its mystery.
The video, directed by Jonathan Barnbrook, uses cosmic imagery from the album juxtaposed against snippets of the song’s lyrics. And with every day since Bowie’s death, its message seems more weighty. “I know something’s very wrong / The post returns for prodigal songs,” he opens.
But the video is gentle and kind and takes that kind of inevitable dissolution as a journey back into the infinity of space. The closing images, which recall “2001: A Space Odyssey,” are a full-circle moment in Bowie’s career, as the same film inspired his hit “Space Oddity.”
When the film finally breaks into color, it’s as much of a validation of life in the face of mortality as a lyric video could ever aspire to.
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