Ever since the designer behind David Bowie’s Blackstar artwork revealed that there are easter eggs hidden in the sleeve of the album, Bowie fans—us at SPIN included—have been digging deep for any visual metaphors, textual clues, and knowing references buried in the cover and booklet. Maybe we’ve been looking a little too hard—sometimes a black star is just a black star, to paraphrase the apocryphal Sigmund Freud—or maybe we haven’t been looking hard enough.
The following tip regards the age at which Bowie died of liver cancer this year–69. It comes from SPIN reader Ilse Rietsema, and is presented without further commentary:
Hello SPIN
In the cd book there are 6 blackstars, page 2,4, 6, 9 , 10 and 16. If you count all the pionts you get the number 69.
page 2 , 5
page 4, 16
page6, 8
page 9, 12
page 10, 20
page 16, 8the total is 69
kind regards
OK, maybe just one more word of commentary: Nice.
