★ [Blackstar]

'★' is a meticulously crafted final statement, where David Bowie consciously confronts his own mortality through a fusion of atmospheric art rock and experimental jazz. Recorded in secret with a group of New York City jazz musicians, the album's dense, often somber arrangements and lyrical allusions to death function as a self-composed epitaph, its full context as a premeditated parting gift made clear only after Bowie's death just two days after its release.