PARIS: The city of Paris will name a street after rock music icon David Bowie, officials said, a first in honour of the singer eight years after his death. “Rue David Bowie” will be officially inaugurated in the capital’s 13th district, on the left bank of the Seine river.

No former dignitary’s name will need to be removed to make room for Bowie since the street was created recently as part of a major makeover of the neighbourhood, which includes modernist university library Bibliotheque Francois Mitterrand.

The thoroughfare, around 50 metres long, was previously known to city planners as VoieDZ/13, a working title that could have appealed to Bowie himself, who wrote songs such as TVC15 or 5:15. Bowie, who died on Jan 10, 2016, of liver cancer, would have been 77 on Monday.

Bowie counts as one of the most influential, as well as best-selling, musicians of the 20th century, mostly thanks to his unparalleled ability to reinvent himself artistically throughout his career that took off with hit single Space Oddity in 1969.

His landmark songs and albums include Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Aladdin Sane, and commercial smash hits Let’s Dance and China Girl as well as gloomily experimental works such as Low.

Paris played less of a prominent role in Bowie’s

life than London, Berlin and Los Angeles, but French avant-garde theatrical culture was an influence on his visual style. He also successfully covered French-language songs Amsterdam and Ma Mort (My Death) by Jacques Brel, who was not actually French but Belgian.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2024