Was David Bowie a fascist?

In 1976, David Bowie became the Thin White Duke: an elegant, unsettling persona born during a period of cocaine addiction, paranoia and psychological collapse.

Bowie praised Hitler, spoke approvingly of fascism and was photographed appearing to give a Nazi salute. But was the Duke an expression of genuine political belief or a dangerous piece of performance art that began to escape its creator?

We trace the Duke through Bowie’s controversial interviews, the post-war artistic fascination with fascist imagery, Situationism and punk, and finally Station to Station the album where Bowie and his creation seem to wrestle for control.

The Last Mixed Tape explores music, culture, politics and the stories hiding underneath the songs.

“This is not a rebel song.”

For more than forty years, Bono has introduced Sunday Bloody Sunday with those six words.

But why?

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White explores the history, controversy and enduring legacy of one of the most important songs in Irish music.

Beginning with the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972, we trace the writing of the song during the recording of War, its first performance in Belfast, the legendary Red Rocks concert, and the debate that has followed it ever since.

Rather than asking who the song supports, this episode asks a different question:

What happens when a piece of art leaves its creators and begins a life of its own?

Along the way, we explore:

• The real events behind Bloody Sunday
• Bono’s reflections from Surrender
• The Edge’s writing of one of rock’s defining guitar riffs
• The Belfast performance that tested the song
• Red Rocks and the white flag
• Why Bono tore up Irish tricolours on stage
• How music shapes politics and how politics reshapes music

If you enjoy long-form conversations about music, culture and history, follow The Last Mixed Tape for new episodes every week.

Brat became one of the defining cultural moments of the decade.

Rather than trying to recreate that success, Music, Fashion, Film asks a far more difficult question: what happens after the breakthrough?

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White explores Charli XCX’s latest album through the lens of artistic identity, modern fame and the growing expectation that musicians must become far more than musicians.

From the satirical mockumentary The Moment to the Vincent Cassel-starring video for Camera, and the closing words of David Cronenberg, Music, Fashion, Film becomes less a traditional album than a meditation on creativity, performance and what happens when an artist no longer owns the meaning of their own work.

Is this Charli XCX’s most challenging record yet?

Or is it something even more ambitious a reflection on what it means to continue making art once the world has already decided who you are?

Music doesn’t just soundtrack history. Sometimes it captures emotions before we have the language to describe them.

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White explores how Dublin’s Gilla Band became one of Ireland’s most important cultural voices, not simply through noise rock, but through their uncompromising portrayal of anxiety, recovery and modern life.

From Dara Kiely’s struggles with psychosis and schizophrenia to the panic attack that became the opening of The Talkies, this documentary traces how the band’s music evolved alongside Ireland’s changing conversation around mental health.

Along the way, the episode examines housing insecurity, burnout, late-stage capitalism and why albums like Holding Hands With Jamie, Most Normal and the new single Placeholder feel less like records and more like emotional documents of a generation.

Julian Casablancas sparked controversy after comparing American Zionists to Black people living under slavery on SubwayTakes. It was a comparison I believe was historically clumsy, rhetorically reckless and ultimately damaging to the point he was trying to make.

But five weeks later, at the Oxford Union, Casablancas returned to the subject with a clearer argument centred on settlements, expansion and the reality facing Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White explores why context matters, why criticism and clarification can coexist, and why the conversation about a musician’s words can sometimes eclipse the people living through the reality those words were attempting to describe.

From The Strokes’ politically charged Coachella performance to Douglas Murray’s comments on Irish voices discussing Israel and Palestine, this episode asks a broader question:

What happens when a bad analogy becomes more famous than the reality it was trying to describe?

Phoebe Bridgers is back with Lost Boys, her first solo music in six years — a song haunted by nostalgia, isolation, masculinity and the machines we carry in our pockets.

At its centre is a dark inversion of one of the most famous slogans in protest music. Where Woody Guthrie wrote “This Machine Kills Fascists,” Bridgers sings: “This machine is killing me.”

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, Stephen White explores what Lost Boys tells us about smartphones, social media, male loneliness and generations who no longer simply use technology, but have grown up inside it.

From the reckless young men haunting the song’s lyrics, to Bridgers’ phone-free Lost Tour and her attempts to rebuild a more direct emotional connection with audiences, this is a story about the machines built to connect us, the people getting lost inside them… and what happens when we decide to leave the machine at the door.

The song identifies the machine. The tour attempts to dismantle it.

Following renewed controversy around Roisin Murphy over comments about transgender people, criticism from artists including The Blessed Madonna and CMAT, and a growing divide between Murphy and the LGBTQ+ community that helped shape her career, this episode explores a larger question.

What happens when an artist becomes estranged from the community that gave their work meaning?

From queer club culture and collective memory to the politics of belonging and audience, this episode examines how music is shaped not only by the people who create it, but by the communities who embrace it.

Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album features Robert Smith of The Cure, but this collaboration tells a much bigger story than a pop star working with one of her heroes.

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, we explore why The Cure continue to resonate with younger listeners, how TikTok and streaming have transformed music discovery, and whether modern audiences are inheriting music differently than previous generations.

Drawing on an idea from David Byrne, we examine how music now exists in a giant cultural “bucket” where new and old songs coexist without chronology, allowing artists like Olivia Rodrigo to become gateways into entire musical worlds.

From The Cure and Talking Heads to Spotify playlists and TikTok algorithms, this episode is about the changing nature of musical discovery and why great songs continue to find new listeners.

Following the recent unrest in Belfast, I found myself returning to one of the most powerful songs in Irish music: Christy Moore’s Viva la Quinta Brigada.

What begins as a song about Irish volunteers who travelled to Spain to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War reveals a much deeper story about Ireland itself.

In this episode of The Last Mixed Tape, I explore the Connolly Column, the Blueshirts, Irish support for Franco, and Christy Moore’s role as one of Ireland’s great custodians of cultural memory.

More than a history lesson, this is a story about identity, belonging, and a question Ireland has been asking for nearly a century: Who gets to define what Ireland is?

From the Spanish Civil War to modern Ireland, Viva la Quinta Brigada remains a song that refuses to let us forget the choices that surround us.

Topics discussed:

• Christy Moore
• Viva la Quinta Brigada
• The Spanish Civil War
• The Connolly Column
• The Blueshirts
• Irish history
• Anti-fascism
• Belfast and modern Ireland
• Protest music and cultural memory

The Last Mixed Tape is a podcast and video essay series exploring music, culture and the stories that connect them.

When reports emerged that an AI-powered version of Ozzy Osbourne could continue interacting with fans after his death, many people focused on the technology.

I found myself thinking about something else. For most of human history, art survived the artist.

Using Ozzy Osbourne as a starting point, this episode explores digital resurrection, AI, memory, grief, nostalgia, Mark Fisher’s “slow cancellation of the future,” and what happens when culture becomes increasingly uncomfortable with endings.

Is AI Ozzy really a story about technology? Or is it a story about our growing inability to let things go?