Bowie has the last word

Perhaps it's a generational thing. In November, David Bowie's Blackstar bafflingly missed out being nominated for inclusion in the 2016 BBC Music Awards, even though it - and his death - had been one of the pivotal cultural moments of the entire year, almost from its origin. And then, when the somewhat more prestigious Grammy Awards nominations came out in December, the final album from one of the most influential rock and pop artists of the previous five decades - an album which enigmatically came out two days before his death - failed to feature at all.

Sage-like pieces in the quality press have sought to examine whether there was something to this. After all, Bowie turned 69 on the day Blackstar came out, competing with albums from artists a mere fraction of his vintage. But the point, hopelessly lost by both the BBC and the Grammys, is that Bowie was - at the time of his death - one of the few remaining artists from the 1960s still producing compelling work (albeit only his second studio album since being forced into retirement in 2004) in the second decade of the 21st century. Blackstar was a strange, confounding, beautiful record, laden with clues - we later discovered - to Bowie's failing health. Listening to it more recently, I've heard nuances that never even occurred to me at the time. This is a particular Bowie trait, I've discovered. Not even his most immediate, commercial records (a Let's Dance, for example) are completely devoid of neat, wonderful time capsules that open up of their own accord, as years and even decades pass on.

So, while I successfully avoided last night's Brit Awards (well, you would, wouldn't you), it was extremely satisfying to see Bowie rewarded with both the Best British Male award, and the gong for Best Album, for Blackstar. Some might argue that the Brits - run by the UK music industry trade body (it was once known simply as the British Phonographic Industry Awards, a stuffy, black tie affair) - aren't in touch with popular sentiment. But, despite the event becoming just a regular showbiz gongfest, the Smash Hits Poll Winner's Party it is not.

Bowie's wins last night were extremely valid recognition of what he did for the British music industry, of his actual lifetime's achievement of blazing a trail - perhaps unequalled - of artistic brilliance, of rich creativity and experimentation of both style and substance, continuing a progressiveness that began with The Beatles long into a career that could so easily have fallen into a degree of self-parody, like many of his peers. But not even Paul McCartney or Neil Young - contemporaries of arguably equal merit - could be so fêted.

To make a statement of the bleeding obvious, Bowie won't appear at The Brits again, unless in some future mawkish tribute. With the recognition he deserved for a career comprising brilliance with audacity - traits rarely found together these days - and winning two of the most prestigious prizes of the night - Bowie he can finally leave the stage with a signal to any of those who follow: this is what you need to aim for. And, as his filmmaker son, Duncan Jones, said in a touching acceptance speech on behalf of his dad for the Blackstar album: "This award is for all the kooks, and all the people who make the kooks". To have been 69, and still a kook, is all the justification ever needed for Bowie.