Bryan Ferry releases new song ‘Star’

Bryan Ferry releases new song Star, a collaboration with performance artist Amelia Barratt his first original music release in over a decade.

Feature on the upcoming 81-track album Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023, Star began as a sketch by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails and was developed by Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt into an anxious, darkly gleaming slab of pounding post-techno.

The song sees Ferry continuing to explore uncharted creative territory, with Barratt and Ferry creating a duet that blurs the lines between art, music and poetry.

Star is accompanied by a music video filmed by Bryan Ferry and James Garzke, starring Amelia Barratt. Watch below:

A Star Is Born

Speaking about Star Bryan Ferry said: “Star is a collaboration with the painter and writer Amelia Barratt. A couple of years ago I helped her record an audiobook here in my studio. I was very impressed by her writing, and this is the first song we did together. I’m very excited about this new work – there’s a lot more to come.”

The 81 tracks that make up Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 illustrate an adventure in music like no other. A story in songwriting that has been unfolding for more than 50 years will now be celebrated in this kaleidoscopic compendium of Bryan Ferry’s music.

The release is a celebration of the performer who has carved out a place as a master modern interpreter of song via a dizzyingly inventive series of cover versions that range from Bob Dylan to Amy Winehouse, Rodgers and Hart to the Velvet Underground via Tim Buckley, Shakespeare, sea shanties and Sam and Dave.

Then there’s the songwriter who, in singles like 1985’s Slave To Love, has crafted music that stands amongst the defining recordings of their era, yet sound unique and timeless to this day. There’s the futurist conjuring vortices of electronica; or the passionate revivalist, presenting songs and styles from the 1920s and 1930s as if they were the hot sound of tomorrow calling. There’s the figure out on the pulsing nightclub dancefloor, tripping the light fantastic; and the guy who wants only to be alone, slipping away into brooding, bittersweet backstreets where everything turns neon and noir.

Marking the start of this career-spanning celebration, Bryan Ferry recently released She Belongs To Me. A powerful re-imagining of the 1965 Bob Dylan classic that brings the story full circle.

Essential Best Of Ferry

Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 brings together, for the first time, Bryan Ferry’s classic recorded output with Island Records, Polydor, Virgin, E.G. Records and BMG, and features two brand new recordings. The album will be released in multiple formats including a 5CD deluxe box set featuring 81 songs, accompanied by a 100-page hardback book containing extensive new liner notes, rare and unseen photographs and imagery.

A 2LP gatefold edition presents The Best Of Bryan Ferry, containing 20 songs pressed to black vinyl with variants including a green/blue vinyl pressing and a clear vinyl pressing. A 1CD version will also feature the same 20 songs and a booklet containing liner notes and photographs. The 81-track edition of the album will be released digitally.

The 5CD deluxe boxset is curated across five stages, with each disc devoted to a different aspect of Bryan Ferry’s career.

Disc One: The Best Of Bryan Ferry presents 20 essential tracks. World-devouring singles like Slave To Love, The ‘In’ Crowd and Let’s Stick Together – songs that are woven into the fabric of British music and remain abidingly popular.

Disc Two: Compositions examines the 1977-2014 period, and how Ferry’s craft has evolved.

Disc Three: Interpretations celebrates the remodelling side to Ferry’s artistry. His remakes of the Velvet Underground’s What Goes On, Sam and Dave’s Hold On, I’m Coming and Otis Redding’s That’s How Strong My Love Is see Ferry exploring the past as if it were now.

Disc Four: The Bryan Ferry Orchestra explores the conceptual project that Ferry began with 2012’s The Jazz Age album, reimagining music from across his own repertoire as if it had been recorded nine decades earlier by one of the great early jazz combos.

Disc Five: Rare and Unreleased gathers B-sides, extras, curiosities and outtakes.

Tracklisting
Disc One: The Best Of Bryan Ferry

1. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
2. These Foolish Things
3. The ‘In’ Crowd
4. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
5. Casanova
6. Let’s Stick Together
7. Sign of the Times
8. Slave To Love
9. Don’t Stop The Dance
10. Windswept
11. Kiss and Tell
12. As Time Goes By
13. Your Painted Smile
14. I Put A Spell On You
15. Which Way To Turn
16. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
17. Make You Feel My Love
18. You Can Dance
19. Love Letters
20. Johnny and Mary

Disc Two: Compositions

1. Can’t Let Go
2. Tokyo Joe
3. This Island Earth
4. Love Me Madly Again
5. Limbo
6. When She Walks In The Room
7. Boys and Girls
8. Zamba
9. Chain Reaction
10. Bête Noire
11. I Thought
12. The Only Face
13. Valentine
14. Loop De Li
15. Reason or Rhyme

Disc Three: Interpretations

1. The Price of Love
2. Shame Shame Shame
3. Hold On (I’m Coming)
4. Just One Look
5. Girl of My Best Friend
6. What Goes On
7. That’s How Strong My Love Is
8. You Go To My Head
9. Where or When
10. The Way You Look Tonight
11. One Night
12. Simple Twist of Fate
13. Positively 4th Street
14. Song to the Siren
15. Fooled Around and Fell In Love

Disc Four: The Bryan Ferry Orchestra

1. Virginia Plain
2. Do The Strand
3. While My Heart Is Still Beating
4. This Island Earth
5. Bitter-Sweet
6. Dance Away
7. Zamba
8. Reason or Rhyme
9. Avalon
10. Back To Black
11. Limbo
12. Young and Beautiful
13. Love Is The Drug
14. Sign of the Times
15. Chance Meeting

Disc Five: Rare and Unreleased

1. Feel The Need
2. Mother of Pearl (Horoscope Version)
3. Don’t Be Cruel
4. I Don’t Want To Go On Without You
5. I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know
6. Crazy Love
7. Whatever Gets You Through The Night
8. Bob Dylan’s Dream
9. He’ll Have To Go
10. A Fool For Love
11. Lowlands Low
12. Is Your Love Strong Enough
13. Sonnet 18
14. She Belongs To Me
15. Oh Lonesome Me
16. Star (with Amelia Barratt)

Retrospective: She Belongs To Me EP Track Listing

1. She Belongs To Me
2. Let’s Stick Together
3. Slave to Love
4. I Put A Spell On You
5. Make You Feel My Love

Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 is available to pre-order here.

Read More: The Best Of Roxy Music – track by track with Bryan Ferry