When I first heard this song, it seemed featureless and grey - nothing special, no energy. But it was memorable, somehow struck a chord.

So I came back to relisten today, and now it has grown on me, and seems incredibly beautiful in its bleakness. This is great pop music which, like great art, takes the simplest words and musical phrases, and uses them in a way that resonates widely, means something more.

For me, deep universal questions bubble up. I see Bowie's generation look back on the  principles they espoused in the '60s and '70s with longing -  free expression and egalitarianism, extremes, their color and their optimism - and ask 'Where are we now?' Don't we all feel like this, as we grow older and look back on our youth?

And finally, out on a limb here, I am hearing something about the epoch, the change to a new century - those old ideas are no longer working, but there seem to be no ready solutions to replace them. Depression in every sense. But elegaic too.