David Bowie was a musician of almost immeasurable influence. His last name echoes amongst the likes of Fitzgerald, Lennon, Presley, Ramone, Nicks and Cobain as one of the people responsible for music today. For almost half a century, he graced genre after genre with his albums, exploring each with an obsessive eye. From folk rock to krautrock-laced funk to art rock and experimental, there seemed to be no undertaking that Bowie couldn’t master. He fathered sub-genres and inspired others to do the same.

He became known not only for his songs, which climbed the charts like English ivy, but also his oddities. His hair, his face paint, his outlandish outfits. During the era of Ziggy Stardust from his station in glam rock, he made being an outsider ‘in’. He challenged gender norms, racism, politics, and a whole manner of preconceived notions of how music was supposed to be. He was an idol, a style icon, a pop star, the star of your favorite childhood movie and in his final effort he was a blackstar.

Bowie’s final album Blackstar was released on January 8th, coinciding with his 69th birthday. The record is a short, emotional, and strange departure from the various forms of pop that Bowie is best known for, but fittingly so. Bowie was never going to be predictable. Two days after the album’s release, the seemingly immortal Bowie died after a long battle with cancer. Blackstar then took on its intended meaning. It was his swan song. With every subsequent listen it seemed increasingly obvious that the Starman was hinting at his impending death the entire time. He was also saying goodbye.

From New York City where he lived to Brixton where he was born, fans collected in droves to honor the sudden passing of their idol. They sang “Starman” in London, left flowers in SoHo, and listeners all over the world shot Blackstar to the #1 position on the Billboard charts. Online retailer, Amazon, sold out of the LP and CD versions of the record and many of his other albums experienced a similar spike in sales. Listening parties, dance parties, viewings of his movies, and other tributes were scheduled throughout January. New York City declared January 20th ‘Bowie Day’ in his honor. People on the street wore Bowie’s trademark Aladdin Sane lightning bolt across their faces. One record store in Brooklyn during the week the singer’s death donated all profits from Blackstar sales to cancer research.

After the connection to his mortality was made for us, the critiques of his music video for “Lazarus” off of Blackstar poured forth,. Everyone has a new analysis of the artful and almost unnerving video. The imagery of a masked Bowie, the permanently dilated pupil that he’s known for obscured from view, and the skeletal remained of an astronaut seemed extra haunting in the wake of his death. His shock of fair hair was grey and wispy. In “Lazarus”, he appeared as something we had never seen before, not in any of his personas: mortal.

We first saw Bowie decades earlier as a twenty-year-old from Brixton with a Beatle-like haircut and none of bravado that he would perfect in later years. It is an iteration barely recognizable next to the likes of Ziggy Stardust or The Thin White Duke. He played a mix of music hall folk rock with hints of psychedelia and pop. His debut David Bowie, which he released in 1967, included the baroque pop of “Rubber Band”, which comes across as peaceful and simple compared to “Space Oddity”. Amongst the other records in his discography it seems like an adopted child in that it resembles nothing else. It sounds appropriate for its time (think: a humbler Herman’s Hermits), but Bowie would soon become better known for being ahead of his time.

This transition began in 1969 with the his next record, another self-titled, that contained the song “Space Oddity”. The track was a tale of the fictional astronaut that fittingly made Bowie a star himself. Just days before the Americans landed Apollo 11 on the moon, Bowie released the single ahead of the record, which would come out a few months later. This was a very formative moment in Bowie’s career. The character he created, Major Tom, would be the first in a cast of many that would populate Bowie’s music. He would be referenced in later songs like “Ashes to Ashes” and “Hallo Spaceboy” as well as more recently in “Blackstar”. Major Tom showed audiences Bowie’s ability to create a character and sell a narrative. “Space Oddity” was the first of many fantastical tales that he would tell and known for creating. The song had such great impact in fact that the record would later take the single’s name and be re-released in 1972 as Space Oddity. The album also introduced us Bowie’s work with Tony Visconti, a lifelong collaborator of Bowie’s who played on the album. Two other longterm colleagues that Bowie began working with at the time were Mick Ronson, who supposedly played on “Space Oddity”, and Mike Vernon, who produced Bowie’s first album.

Ronson and Visconti kept working with Bowie through to his next album, 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World. The psychedelic rock album touched on everything from sex to Vietnam. Although Bowie hadn’t really hit true commercial success with the album, the track “The Man Who Sold the World” would become, like “Space Oddity”, one of his best known songs. Another element that he would carry into his future career was his attitude towards gender norms. One of the covers for the LP featured Bowie is a sort of dress, which would be the first of many androgynous and gender-bending outfits.

Bowie would channel actress Marlene Dietrich for the cover of his next album 1971’s Hunky Dory. Although Bowie traded Visconti for bass player Trevor Bolder for the record, the album’s personal now formed what would become The Spiders from Mars, Bowie’s backing band for later records. The group consisted of Bolder on bass guitar, Mick Ronson on guitar, and Mick Woodmansey on drums. The album featured “Life on Mars?”, a fantastically strange and surreal song. The lyric “Look at those cavemen go” references the Hollywood Argyles song “Alley Oop”:

Hunky Dory and Bowie’s other early albums have earned higher praise in the present than in the past. In the late 60s and early 70s, Hunky Dory was well-liked, but its main function was to continue building the foundation for Bowie’s later success. When compared to the breadth of his lifeswork the album is not only his best, but also perhaps one of the best ever written. An essential for any collection and yet the main show for Bowie at that point in his career was yet to begin.

by Zoe Marquedant