January 8 would have been David Bowie’s 75th birthday, so Amazon Music is celebrating all month long with their [RE]DISCOVER campaign. Today, that celebration manifested itself with a cover of “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” a highlight from Bowie’s 2016 album Blackstar, by Spoon.
Britt Daniel says of the recording, “‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’ is a tune Alex and I have been playing since we learned it for an acoustic and piano show in Mexico City in 2016. It’s just a fantastic song, and as the last song on Bowie’s final album, it doesn’t disappoint. We recorded this version live in December 2021.”
In 2019, Daniel told Stereogum of covering the Bowie track, “I just found it to be a very, very moving song. I can’t remember why that ended up being the one Alex [Fischel] and I did. I guess I must’ve really just loved it.” In 2017, he also told Spin, “I ended up listening to even more Bowie than usual last year. [Tarbox Road Studios is] out in the middle of the woods, nothing happens. The control room’s nice, but the living quarters — if you wanna listen to music, there’s only one way: It’s on this jambox, and you have to play a CD. So we burned maybe six, seven CDs, Bowie’s Lodger was one of them, and they got played constantly.”
Listen to Spoon’s “I Can’t Give Everything Away” cover above.