Well, it's about time. Posted out-of-the-blue on his website, Bowie's first release in nearly a decade – the first peek from a forthcoming LP, The Next Day, due in March – is a stirring melancholy ballad set in Berlin, with the singer reflecting on old haunts. "Had to get the train from Potsdamer Platz," he croons over piano and big shimmery Eighties synths, with sad vibrato in his voice and a cryptic reference to "walking the dead." But then the bridge comes, he takes heart in the sun and the rain, and a high-pitched electric guitar soars brightly across the sky. It conjures nothing so much as the German lovers from "Heroes," walking among ghosts in a new world, hope and despair hand in hand, a moment so real you can taste it.

Listen to "Where Are We Now?":

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.