Postmodern elements of the trilogy
As a listener, you begin to notice the ways in which Bowie's earlier experimentations with
synthesizers on Station to Station are further explored throughout Low and “ Heroes”. If you
consider the nature of the music, you begin to see that nothing is rounded or complete. The
listener may begin to see the Berlin Trilogy as Bowie's search for fulfilment, or for a "normal
life”. All in all, the postmodern element of the trilogy is Bowie’s attempts to regain his grip on
reality. Perhaps he chose to settle in Berlin as it is similar to both his creative process and his
personal circumstances during the late 1970’s, in the sense that it's a city that is constantly trying
to find its feet and Bowie is an individual who is also repeatedly trying to find his feet. The
postmodern in musical terms is not characterised by a particular trend or genre but rather, a
period in which a huge amount of new music was born out of an unstoppable wave of
intertextual musical innovation.
What we define as popular music in a postmodern context is often a mix of modernist high art
and pop culture references. For example, two of Bowie’s biggest influences at the time was the
detached, disjointed electronica of Kraftwerk and the modernist theatre of Brecht. Here we
begin to see how Bowie discarded the structure that forms a grand narrative. As a result, this
dismantles both modern and realist representations of the world. This prominent form of