Book Review: Sheet Music

Die-hard fans won't find anything revelatory in Rob Sheffield's new biography/eulogy, but at least they'll be in good company. The longtime Rolling Stone contributor blends biography and introspection in On Bowie, which reads like a collection of cover stories rather than a cohesive narrative. Each of the singer's classic albums through Let's Dance merits its own chapter, while his entire late-Eighties and Nineties output gets reduced to a footnote in the final 30 pages. Sheffield dares readers to keep up with his brisk pacing, and he definitely reaches in comparing the Thin White Duke to C-3PO, Josie & the Pussycats, and Atlanta trap-rapper Future within three pages. Yet in his personal relationship with the Starman's music, we're reminded how Bowie made us all feel like heroes.

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On Bowie

by Rob Sheffield
Dey Street Books, 192 pp., $24.99