"Time may change me/ But I can't trace time," sang David Bowie in the closing lines of one of his most famous songs, "Changes." But more than 40 years later, tracing time is exactly what he's doing. Earlier this week on his 66th birthday, the man born David Robert Jones released his first new single in nearly 10 years – the elegiac ballad "Where Are We Now?" – and in so doing, confounded expectations with his most surprising stunt in years: He finally looked back.

Bowie being Bowie, it isn't just the (very good) song itself that has people talking. Along with the new track, he also unveiled cover art that was immediately received with skepticism, bemusement and confusion by fans. No, the image was nothing like the emaciated, sexually ambiguous "Diamond Dogs" gatefold, or a return to his neo-fascistic mid-'70s period. It wasn't even akin to the dapper, tweed-zombie from 2002's underrated, "Heathen." Instead, the cover in question shows a repurposed image from "Heroes" with the iconic photo obscured by a blank square with the album title printed in stark sans-serif font:

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