Blackstar

David Bowie wrote and recorded this for the opening credits of The Last Panthers, a six-part crime thriller co-produced by UK's Sky and France's Canal+. It marks the first time Bowie has contributed original music for a movie or TV show, since he recorded "I'm Afraid Of Americans" for the 1995 film Showgirls.

Bowie wrote the track after meeting Swedish director Johan Renck, whose previous work includes Breaking Bad, during filming. "I was looking for one of the icons of my youth to write the music for the title sequence, but was presented with a god," Renck said. "His first response was precise, engaged and curious. The piece of music he laid before us embodied every aspect of our characters and the series itself - dark, brooding, beautiful and sentimental (in the best possible incarnation of this word)." He added: "All along, the man inspired and intrigued me and as the process passed, I was overwhelmed with his generosity. I still can't fathom what actually happened."

The full, just under 10-minute track was released on November 20, 2015 as the lead single from the Blackstar album. The original version was more than 11 minutes long, but Bowie and producer Tony Visconti cut it to 9:57 after learning iTunes won't post singles that cross the 10-minute mark. "David was adamant it be the single," Visconti told Rolling Stone, "and he didn't want both an album version and a single version, since that gets confusing."