This Is All I Ever Meant

David Bowie “I Can’t Give Everything Away”

It seems reductive to say that Blackstar is a record about aging and mortality – there’s a lot more going on both thematically and musically – but I think the most powerful moments on the album address these ideas from a vaguely unsettling perspective. He’s morbid, but not particularly welcoming of his inevitable fate. There’s a sense of clarity setting in, and in wrapping up loose ends, but a refusal to be maudlin or willing to let go of anything so easily. “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” the melancholy but serene finale, has Bowie singing about the necessity for boundaries and his right to be opaque about private matters. You can read this song a few different ways, but I think it’s really a statement about his entire life and body of work – it’s always him, but it’s not. Bowie was a pioneer of bringing an actor’s concept of performance to rock music, and even if there’s a distance to that, it’s just as draining as a more “confessional” approach. You give a lot to your audience, but you draw a line somewhere. Maybe this is his way of apologizing for that distance, or just explaining it. Perhaps the idea of holding on to the things he can’t give away is, for him, a way to keep being alive.

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