I’ve been listening to several new albums by favourite artists in recent weeks. The Pet Shop Boys’ Elysium is fantastic. Bob Dylan’s Tempest is growing on me. Ian McCulloch’s Pro Patria Mori is an instant pleasure full of his characteristic melodies.

The latter two albums contain homages: Dylan’s song ‘Roll on John’ is about John Lennon, a peer who’s been dead for over 30 years, and McCulloch’s ‘Me and David Bowie’ is about Bowie, an idol and mentor who’s still alive but retired and not much in the public eye.…

One the of things that fascinates me about David Bowie is his practice of rerecording his own songs, often with very different arrangements. He’s done it throughout his career and seemingly for various reasons. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that he sometimes releases astonishing songs in relatively obscure or poorly promoted albums or soundtracks, which limits their potential audience.

His record companies have sometimes wanted to better exploit the songs by rereleasing them in better promoted products, but the reverse has also happened – record companies have refused to release recordings and so Bowie has had to rework them to get them released later.…