This week David Bowie released the sec­ond sin­gle from his upcom­ing album, The Next Day. It’s called “The Stars (Are Out Tonight),” and the accom­pa­ny­ing video (shown above) builds on Bowie’s life­long explo­ration of androg­y­ny.

Bowie is joined in the minia­ture film by actress Til­da Swin­ton, who plays his wife, and the mod­els Andrej Pejic and Sask­ia De Brauw, who play a pair of young celebri­ties who mock and tor­ment the aging cou­ple. Swin­ton looks like Bowie, and Pejic and DeBrauw look like Bowie and Swin­ton.

The sto­ry “cap­tures a twen­ty first cen­tu­ry moment in its con­ver­gence of age, gen­der and the normal/celebrity divide,” accord­ing to a state­ment post­ed ear­li­er this week on Bowie’s Face­book page. It was direct­ed by the Ital­ian-born film­mak­er Flo­ria Sigis­mon­di, a pro­lif­ic music video mak­er best known for her 2010 fea­ture film, The Run­aways.

The Next Day will be released on March 12. To learn more about it and to watch the first video from the album, see our post from last month, “David Bowie Cel­e­brates 66th Birth­day with First New Song in a Decade, Plus Vin­tage Videos.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

Backed by 157 Musi­cians, Beck Reimag­ines David Bowie’s 1977 Clas­sic, “Sound and Vision”

Édith Piaf’s life was any­thing but rosy. Born in a Parisian slum, she was aban­doned by her moth­er and lived for awhile in a broth­el run by her grand­moth­er. As a teenag­er she sang on the streets for mon­ey. She was addict­ed to alco­hol and drugs for much of her life, and her lat­er years were marred by chron­ic pain. Through it all, Piaf man­aged to hold onto a basi­cal­ly opti­mistic view of life. She sang with a lyri­cal aban­don that seemed to tran­scend the pain and sor­row of liv­ing.

On April 3, 1954 Piaf was the guest of hon­or on the French TV show La Joie de Vivre. She was 38 years old but looked much old­er. She had recent­ly under­gone a gru­el­ing series of “aver­sion ther­a­py” treat­ments for alco­holism, and was by that time in the habit of tak­ing mor­phine before going onstage. Cor­ti­sone treat­ments for arthri­tis made the usu­al­ly wire-thin singer look puffy. But when Piaf launch­es into her sig­na­ture song, “La Vie en Rose” (see above), all of that is left behind.

Nine years after this per­for­mance, when Piaf died, her friend Jean Cocteau said of her: “Like all those who live on courage, she did­n’t think about death–she defied it. Only her voice remains, that splen­did voice like black vel­vet.”

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“Brown­ie” Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er:

Eric Clap­ton recent­ly allowed a cam­era crew into his Lon­don home for an inti­mate talk. The pur­pose was to demon­strate a new series of high-priced, lim­it­ed-edi­tion repro­duc­tions of some of his most famous gui­tars, which will soon go on sale to ben­e­fit his Cross­roads Cen­tre in Antigua. But as Rolling Stone not­ed in a recent online piece, the con­ver­sa­tion went much deep­er.

In the video above, Clap­ton tries out a repli­ca of an ear­ly sun­burst Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er, nick­named “Brown­ie,” that he pur­chased in 1967 and played with Derek and the Domi­noes. The orig­i­nal gui­tar, which had a heav­i­ly worn maple neck that Clap­ton attached to a Fend­er Tele­cast­er body dur­ing his days with Blind Faith, was sold at auc­tion in 1999 for $497,500. The repli­cas were made by the Fend­er Cus­tom Shop and will sell for $15,000. In the video, Clap­ton plugs the gui­tar into a 1950s-era Fend­er “Tweed Twin” ampli­fi­er and tries it out, play­ing a few blues lines and rem­i­nisc­ing about his ear­ly Stra­to­cast­er-play­ing influ­ences: Bud­dy Hol­ly, Bud­dy Guy and Jimi Hen­drix.

Mar­tin 000–28 and 000–45:

Above, Clap­ton tries out a pair of acoustic gui­tars made in his hon­or by Mar­tin & Co. He talks about his ear­ly infat­u­a­tion with Mar­tin gui­tars, which he devel­oped after hear­ing oth­er musi­cians talk about them and after see­ing footage of Big Bill Broonzy play­ing the 000–28 mod­el. Unlike the oth­er “Cross­roads Col­lec­tion” gui­tars, the Mar­tins were appar­ent­ly not mod­eled after indi­vid­ual gui­tars Clap­ton once played, but were instead hand­made to his spec­i­fi­ca­tions. The Cross­roads mod­el 000–28 will sell for $6,000 and the 000–48 will be offered in two edi­tions made with dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als, one for $13,000 and the oth­er for $50,000.

“Lucy” Gib­son Les Paul:

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing of the three videos involves a gui­tar Clap­ton is not usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with: a Gib­son Les Paul. The gui­tar is a repro­duc­tion of a heav­i­ly worn 1957 cher­ry-red gui­tar Clap­ton bought in about 1967, when he was tour­ing Amer­i­ca with Cream. He gave the gui­tar to George Har­ri­son of the Bea­t­les, who nick­named it “Lucy” and played it on the White Album and Let it Be. When Clap­ton accept­ed Har­rison’s request to play lead gui­tar on the record­ing of “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” he played it on Lucy. In the video, Clap­ton rem­i­nisces about the Bea­t­les ses­sion and talks about the ampli­fi­er he used dur­ing his days with John May­al­l’s Blues­break­ers and the ones he used after­wards. Har­ri­son briefly loaned the orig­i­nal Lucy Les Paul back to Clap­ton, who played it dur­ing his famous Rain­bow Con­cert in 1973, but the gui­tar still belongs to the Har­ri­son estate. The Gib­son-made repli­cas will sell for $15,000 each.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Sound

Eric Clap­ton and Steve Win­wood Join Forces at the His­toric Blind Faith Con­cert in Hyde Park, 1969