The city of Paris will on Monday, January 8, name a street after music icon David Bowie, officials have said – a first in honor of the singer eight years after his death, on what would have been his 77th birthday.
"Rue David Bowie" will be officially inaugurated in the capital's 13th arrondissement on the Left Bank.
The street that will bear the singer's name was created recently as part of a major makeover of the neighborhood, which also includes the modernist university library Bibliotheque François Mitterrand.
The thoroughfare – around 50 meters long – was previously known to city planners as "VoieDZ/13," a working title which may well have appealed to Bowie himself, who wrote similarly titled songs including "TVC15" and "5:15."
Bowie – who died on January 10, 2016, of liver cancer – is counted 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. His career took off with the hit single "Space Oddity" in 1969, and his landmark songs and albums included Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Aladdin Sane, and commercial smash hits "Let's Dance" and "China Girl."
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 the Belgian Jacques Brel. He still has a cult following in France, where fan clubs such as "Bowie France" sell merchandise and organize concerts and Bowie conventions drawing thousands, and where cover band Bowie Reloaded fills large venues with nostalgic fans.
An avowed Bowie fan, the mayor of Paris's 13th arrondissement Jerome Coumet launched the idea for a Bowie street in early 2020 and won approval later that year. Monday's unveiling of the street sign will be followed by an evening of homage to Bowie at the arrondissement's city hall.