“The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” by David Bowie

"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" was the second single from The Next Day, David Bowie's 25th studio album: the video landed on 25 February 2013 and Columbia put the song up for download the next day. Bowie wrote it alone and produced it with Tony Visconti, and he plays 12-string guitar and sings lead and backing vocals, Gerry Leonard and David Torn add guitars, Gail Ann Dorsey plays bass, Zachary Alford drums, Steve Elson handles baritone sax and contrabass clarinet, and a string quartet's worth of players pitch in, with Visconti even blowing a recorder.

That April, Record Store Day brought it out on a limited seven-inch, backed with the record's opening single, "Where Are We Now?", and it later drew a nomination for Best Rock Performance at the 2014 Grammys. The sleeve uses Al Farrow's 1990 image of the painter Egon Schiele.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.