The year in music: deaths of rock legends are a pivotal moment, as a generation of musical elders turn to face the final curtain

The deaths of music legends David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen encapsulated a year of loss, as some of the brightest stars and most creative forces of this century and last made their farewells. Dylan’s Nobel Prize was a silver lining to a gloomy year

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David Bowie performing in 1996. He died on January 10.

Published: 7:32am, 23 Dec 2016Updated: 7:32am, 23 Dec 2016

The year began with David Bowie releasing one of the most acclaimed albums of his vast career, a sign of new creative energy from the rock legend. Two days later, he was dead, from an undisclosed battle with cancer.

Three months after that, another pop icon, Prince – who had covered Bowie’s classic Heroes at one of his final concerts – also died, succumbing to an accidental overdose of painkillers despite his outward signs of vigour.

By late 2016, Leonard Cohen put out an album ominously entitled You Want It Darker – and the storied songwriter and poet, who spent his life reflecting on spirituality and mortality, passed away within weeks.

The past year, so momentous on the political front, also marks a symbolic turning point for rock, with a generation of musical elders starting to exit the stage.

The year culminated with another milestone: the Nobel Committee for Literature endorsed rock as part of the literary canon, selecting music icon Bob Dylan as this year’s laureate and hailing his “new poetic expressions”.

The sense of a rock era’s passing could also be felt in California in October with Desert Trip, a new music festival that is likely to go down as the most profitable in history.