David Bowie - Dead Man Walking

What this video is

Released April 14, 1997 as the third single from Bowie's Earthling album, 'Dead Man Walking' arrived at the apex of Bowie's late-career reinvention as an electronic/drum-and-bass artist. Bowie described the song as his homage to rock and roll that is still young while its practitioners grow old, embedding themes of mortality and generational identity into both the track and the video's surrealist body-horror…

Why it matters

A canonical example of the late-1990s art-music-video form, 'Dead Man Walking' sits at the intersection of industrial rock, drum-and-bass electronica, and fine-art surrealism. It demonstrates how the music video format could operate as an autonomous visual art object rather than a promotional…

The director

Floria Sigismondi is an Italian-Canadian director, photographer, and visual artist. Her audacious music video imagery and trademark cinematic style made her one of the most acclaimed directors in the genre's history, with iconic videos for Rihanna, Björk,…