An ambitious but only semi-successful effort to find God in the lyric sheet.
A critic attempts to parse the cryptic rock star’s spiritual seeking.
David Bowie (1947-2016) wasn’t an overtly religious musician, but he spent much of his life pondering metaphysical matters. As Guardian journalist Ormerod notes, Bowie read widely about Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist traditions, studied up on occult figures like Aleister Crowley, and occasionally worked matters of faith into his performances. (Most famously, at a 1992 tribute to Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, he dropped to his knees and recited the Lord’s Prayer.) Bowie would occasionally make explicit religious references in his songs—an early song, “Silly Boy Blue,” was inspired by his investigations into Buddhism, and his late musical and song “Lazarus” had clear Christian overtones. But more often a listener has to do a lot of reading between the lines, a task at which Ormerod is only intermittently convincing. It’s interesting to know, for instance, how Bowie’s song “Station to Station” was informed by the Stations of the Cross and how the musician worked his Buddhist interests into a soundtrack to the TV adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Buddha of Suburbia. But often, Ormerod overreaches. There’s nothing substantively religious about Bowie playing “rock god” during his Ziggy Stardust era, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings about dancing don’t make “Let’s Dance” more than a featherlight pop tune. No question, religion mattered to Bowie, and the book is filled with quotes from the man about his interests and inspirations. But it is only intermittently persuasive that “when you look at Bowie’s career in this way, it becomes illuminated anew”; it’s more correct to say that some of his songs gain a few more intriguing opacities, which might have been better asserted in a substantive essay rather than in a book.
An ambitious but only semi-successful effort to find God in the lyric sheet.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781399422826
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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