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?":

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.