David Bowie's first single in a decade

Rock legend David Bowie is on a Berlin tip as he releases his first single in a decade to coincide with his 66th birthday.

The start of this powerful video had us worried the song was going to be a grim, geriatric plod a la Lou Reed or Johnny Cash. Luckily Bowie is better than all that. Where Are We Now? starts out all downtempo and minimalist, but within three minutes it's soaring like a German eagle, proving that David Bowie, aka the Thin White Duke, aka Ziggy Stardust, aka Jareth the Goblin King still has his songwriting chops.

His emergence from ten years of seclusion, or more likely, millionairy self-indulgence, has the media falling over itself in anticipation of the forthcoming album and tour and also belated appreciation of his stellar career.

The new album will be called The Next Day, and it's due out in March. The cover design has already been revealed, and it's a cunning reboot of one of his own legendary album covers, fusing the classic and the contemporary, as Bowie does.

To school yourself up on Bowie – it's a large body of work stretching back to the late Sixties – you could do worse than visit his website and get it from the horse's mouth.