Two new David Bowie albums ensure the legend lives on

Fans of David Bowie will be treated to two new releases this year after it was announced that two posthumous albums are lined up for 2020.

A digital EP featuring previously unheard versions of songs will be put out weekly and a live session will be released on Record Store Day in April.

The first track from the Is It Any Wonder? EP, an acoustic version of Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World, was released yesterday to mark what would have been the singer’s 73rd birthday.

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The ChangesNowBowie live session, recorded in 1996 during rehearsals for Bowie’s 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in New York, comes later in the year. It was previously broadcast on Radio 1 by DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, The Guardian reports.

Track listings are not available for Is it Any Wonder?, although Parlophone Records – the label behind the releases – has said that ChangesNowBowie will include versions of Lady Stardust, Quicksand, Aladdin Sane and other classic Bowie tracks.

The releases are “part of a lucrative posthumous career for the singer”, the Guardian adds.

“Shortly after Bowie’s death in 2016 sales of his albums in the US rose by more than 5,000%, according to Nielsen Music, with 682,000 units sold in the week he died.”

Esquire notes that the newly released version of Bowie classic The Man Who Sold The World “feels like a conversation between the artist and his younger self”.

The magazine adds: “This version of The Man Who Sold The World, has a sort of wise, mature harmony. The simple songwriting of it shines.”

Bowie’s wife, model Iman Abdulmajid, yesterday tweeted a tribute to her late husband on what would have been his 73rd birthday.

The musician died in January 2016 from cancer. He marked his death with the release of his 25th studio album, the Grammy award-winning Blackstar.