(MANDATORY CREDIT Ebet Roberts/Getty Images) David Bowie performing at Giant Stadium at the ... [+]
David Bowie may no longer be with us, but his music lives on—and now there’s more coming for the world to hear. The late rocker has a new album coming in the spring, and while superfans may recognize all of the songs featured on it, more casual listeners may enjoy the reworked project and a handful of tunes they might not know very well.
A new posthumous album titled Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) has been announced from Bowie and his record label, Parlophone. The set is scheduled to be released on April 20—the date of the upcoming Record Store Day—when labels release special items to help bring customers to independent physical record stores.
Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) is being marketed as a new release, but it’s actually more like a slightly changed edition of Bowie’s famous The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars album. The two titles share many of the same songs, though the newer offering does mix things up a bit.
Bowie’s upcoming release includes four songs that didn’t make the cut for The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. Those tracks replace a handful of hits from the beloved release, making this new project feel fresh and new–even if all the music featured on it was recorded and released in one way or another decades ago.
The new additions to Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) that make it different from its predecessor include the tracks “Round And Round,” “Amsterdam,” “Velvet Goldmine,” and “Holy Holy.” Nearly all of these songs have been released at some point in the past in various forms–as B-sides and more–but they were not included on the final edition of the Ziggy Stardust album, even if they were created around that time.
By the time The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars was released, Bowie had changed his mind about some of the songs originally set to be featured, and he had recorded new ones. The added tracks include future favorites from his catalog, such as “Starman” and “Suffragette City.” The title of this new album comes from the lyrics to “Starman,” which is an interesting choice, as the song isn’t even featured on this release.
Bowie passed away in January 2016 after a private battle with cancer. His final album, Blackstar, had been released just two days prior. Since his death, the Bowie estate and various record labels have dropped a number of special projects that fans of the glam rocker have snapped up, including Toy, which appeared in 2021 and featured reworkings of a number of hit songs and a few unreleased cuts.
