[2] At 9:57, it was the longest song to enter the Billboard Hot 100 charts, overtaking Harry Chapin's "A Better Place to Be", until Tool broke the record in 2019 with "Fear Inoculum".

Also described as an "avant jazz sci-fi torch song," it features a "drum and bass rhythm, [a] two-note tonal melody with hints of Gregorian chant, [and] shifting time signatures.

"[12] The repeated line "at the centre of it all" is also present in Bowie's 2002 single "Slow Burn" and appears to originate in Aleister Crowley's The Book of Lies.

[16] The music video for "Blackstar" is a surreal ten-minute short film directed by Johan Renck (the director of The Last Panthers, the show for which the song was composed).

It depicts a woman with a tail, played by Elisa Lasowski,[17] discovering a dead astronaut and taking his jewel-encrusted skull to an ancient, otherworldly town.

Renck has speculated that Bowie may have been contemplating his own mortality and relevance to history while developing the video, but said that the crucified scarecrows were not intended as a messianic symbol.

Renck has also stated that Bowie portrays three distinct characters in the video: the introverted, tormented, blind "Button Eyes"; the "flamboyant trickster" in the song's middle section; and the "priest guy" holding the book embossed with the "★" symbol.

[27][28] In the annual Village Voice's Pazz & Jop mass critics poll of the year's best in music in 2016, "Blackstar" was tied at number 9, with Rihanna's "Work".