David Bowie Honored by Lorde and Gary Oldman at Brit Awards

The 2016 Brit Awards, held last night, included a tribute to David Bowie highlighted by emotional contributions from singers Lorde and Annie Lennox and Bowie's longtime friend, actor Gary Oldman.

The musical segment started with a musical performance from the band Bowie employed on his final tour, with a spotlight shining on a vacant spot on the stage while "Space Oddity" played — the start of a medley of Bowie hits accompanied by video footage. Lorde joined the band for a performance of "Life on Mars?," which you can watch above.

As Rolling Stone notes, Lorde had a personal connection with Bowie — when they met in 2013, he told her that her music sounded like "tomorrow" to him, a compliment that left her understandably humbled. "I was like, 'I could creatively die and just be happy forever,'" she said later. "To have someone like that tell you that listening to you felt like listening to tomorrow. ... We were holding hands and just staring into each other's eyes and talking, and I was like, 'This is David Bowie's hand, what am I doing?' It was insane. A beautiful moment."

Before Lorde and Bowie's band came onstage, he was honored with a Brit Icon Award, which Lennox and Oldman accepted on his behalf. "For me, it's almost impossible to mention Bowie's name in the past tense," said Lennox. "Everything he represented as an artist was and always will be vital and incredibly present."

Oldman included some bittersweet anecdotes about Bowie's final days in his remarks, which you can watch below, revealing that after receiving his cancer diagnosis, Bowie quipped, "The good news is I have my cheekbones back." Holding his friend up as an ideal of "originality, experimentation, exploration," Oldman went on to share a few words from one of their final conversations.

"In recent years David sparingly spoke about music and his process," Oldman told the audience. "But in one of these rare instances, he graciously and elegantly expounded. 'Music has given me over 40 years of extraordinary experiences. I can’t say that life’s pains or more tragic episodes have been diminished because of it, but it has allowed me so many moments of companionship when I have been lonely and sublime means of communications when I have wanted to touch people. It has been my doorway of perception and the house that I live in.'"

Watch David Bowie Honored With Brit Icon Award

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