All the Ways That David Bowie Changed Our Lives and Expanded Our Minds

David Bowie was much more than a player or an worker . He was an icon , a force of pop cultivation that pretend multitudinous hoi polloi through his unbelievable vocation . Here ’s what the uncomparable David Bowie has entail to all of us at io9 and Gizmodo .

David Bowie Was the Greatest, Truest Rock Star in the Universe

When David Bowie pass away this morning , we did n’t just lose him . We lost Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke . We mislay Aladdin Sane , and Thomas Jerome Newton , and the Goblin King . We lost an Internet Explorer , a pioneer , one of the most creative , magnificent player of the twentieth century . And we lost the greatest rock candy star the mankind has ever get it on .

Other musicians might have sell more record album , and other bands may have had more # 1 hits . Maybe they had more shout out fans or waste , debauched night ( although I imagine Bowie could give most of them a run for their money in that paying attention ) . But only Bowie truly epitomize rock n ’ twine more than anyone , because Bowie bed what a tilt mavin was , before any of us .

He explain it in his seminal record album Ziggy Stardust and the spider from Mars , back in 1972 . Like Bowie himself , his Ziggy persona was an alien , alienated from society for his foresightful hair , his make - up , his open sexuality and androgyny . But his status as the ultimate foreigner made him an ikon for every teenager and grownup who ever felt excluded from the mainstream ; he was a christ that understand , accepted and have a go at it everyone who traditional culture disapprove of .

What made Bowie so brilliant is how he understood that how simultaneously powerful and superficial being a rock star was — how his position as an icon was crafted not just by him , but by his fans who wanted to be saved . By literally performing as Ziggy , he turned the subtext of that artificiality into schoolbook . And , because he knew how all important , how inevitable it was for all Messiah to die , Bowie did n’t hesitate to kill his Ziggy persona when the time come .

Had Bowie only created Ziggy Stardust , he would be remember as a virtuoso , but this was only the beginning of a 40 - class life history that spanned … just about everything . David Bowie rocked , he crooned , he dance with Mick Jagger in the street ; he defied prospect and go away to Germany , churn out some of the most brllliant , challenging work of his career .

He parlayed his born theatrical endowment into pic stardom , using his magnetic otherworldliness to playing aliens , geniuses and implausibly sexy Goblin Kings . He publicly claimed he see his first wife when they were having sex with the same valet . And he was a heavy Spongebob Squarepants fan , too .

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David Bowie was a musician , an actor , a genius , a chameleon , an image breaker and , most specially , the true rock whiz who ever survive . He was a pioneer so far ahead of his time that few people have been able to watch the trail he blazed . There was literally no one else like David Bowie , and now that he ’s exit , there never will be again . — Rob Bricken

Ziggy Stardust isthe greatest skill fiction record album of all meter . This is not my opinion . It is universally acknowledged that Bowie ’s rock opera about an alien who come to earth in its last days and becomes a rock’n’roll n ’ cast messiah does n’t just hold up today , it ’s just as brilliant today as it was when Bowie released it 44 years ago . The album is technically about an alien who come to ground in the major planet ’s dying days with a message of repose , sexual love and sexual activity , but who is destroyed by his fame and his fans ; however , that scarce grave the surface of Bowie ’s joyous , somber , sexy , messianic , apocalyptic scifi chef-d’oeuvre .

When I in the end listened to Ziggy Stardust for the first time in 2000 , I did n’t anticipate let out my favorite album ever ; it was 28 eld older at that point . So I was astonished to let on how relevant it still felt , how powerful it was . The album did n’t just give up ; it was still bright all these X later . hear it to it today , with tear in my eyes , of trend it still is . I was n’t animated when it was recorded , and nor do I fit any idea of the ultimate outsider that Bowie sang of , and yet this album mouth to me in means that no other record album ever has , that I ca n’t perhaps explain . It ’s alien , it ’s timeless , and yet it ’s intensely personal even as its epic poem . And , most fittingly , it could serve well as the epitaph of Bowie himself : “ He too it all too far / but boy could he play guitar ” — RB

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This music picture still give me goose bump every prison term I see it . Something about the ultra - rude optic gist get its weird clown / funeral imagery look that much more bleak and horrifying . The whole affair looks like a washed - out , inescapable nightmare , or a withdrawal - have delusion . It also search a lot like an sequence of Doctor Who from that same epoch . The Larry Graham - influenced funk bassline is counter by a wall of synth that makes the song impossible to trip the light fantastic to , and the combination of the two drills itself into your brain . I call up I find this Sung dynasty at exactly the same clip as “ Space Oddity , ” and it seemed to be two parts of the same story about someone who travels too far out into the universe , and then crashes to Earth . — Charlie Jane Anders

It should be no surprisal that David Bowie ’s first plastic film role was as an noncitizen in Nicholas Roeg ’s The Man Who Fell to Earth . It might be more surprising to learn that Bowie was as unspoiled at act on camera as he was rocking on microscope stage . As Thomas Jerome Newton , a Martian who comes to Earth to bring water supply to his dying planet but gets destroyed by the frailty of Earth , Bowie was perfectly stray . He was simultaneously otherworldly , but somehow still more human than his fellow cast member — a unadulterated exercise of his Ziggy Stardust theatrical role . The gentleman Who Fell to Earth is one of the greatest science fiction films of the 20th century , and Bowie is responsible for most of it . Given his immense endowment in all other walks of his notable living , perhaps we should n’t have been surprised at all . — RB

As a minor , I only really mind to funk music . I was kind of an annoying Casimir Funk purist , who turned up my nozzle at anything that lacked a really stiff bassline and sooner a nine - piece automobile horn subdivision . But some age after it actually came out , I realized that his Let ’s Dance record album was just bright . The notion that Bowie had figure out with Nile Rodgers , the R&B / disco brainiac behind Sister Sledge and Chic , was kind of mind - flabbergast to me , and the thumping beats in this album entirely won me over . For some reason , the song “ Cat People ” was the one that in reality stuck in my mind and got stuck on dateless repeat though . This howling soundscape , and the taradiddle of people who deform themselves into computed axial tomography , was only made more intensely weird by the notion of “ putting out fervor with petrol . ” I had n’t really seen the 1982 horror moving-picture show with Nastassia Kinski as a sexy were - qat , but listening to Bowie ’s song in a loop conjured an figure of speech of that fib that was belike good than the factual movie . — CJA

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I was a adolescent when the humankind had call up David Bowie had all but retired from pass water Modern euphony in the mid-2000s , so I did n’t really produce up listening to his medicine . But I can still call back the first time I pick up it , when I watched the first episode of the BBC clock time - travelling / cop thriller Life on Mars . away from loan its name to the serial , the titular birdsong features in the opening scenes of the show where protagonist Sam Tyler is hit by a car , only to wake up and find himself back in 1973 .

It ’s such a potent moment , made iconic by Bowie ’s poetic lyrics . “ Life on Mars ” is a birdsong of contradiction and dissonance that makes it hone for a bit of discovery like Sam ’s , or clock time travel in universal . It ’s both immediately anthemic and yet deeply melancholy , something that upon first appraisal is wildly dense and yet as you listen more and more it reveal layers of itself . It ’s a vocal about looking at the world and want to be somewhere else , some prison term else , and the hope and disaster that that all entail .

I was rob , heroic to get word more , something that lead to me digging into my parent ’ euphony collection and , finally into an fervid appreciation for Bowie that is still with me today — an appreciation of his ability to capture the supernal concept of the other across his different personas and his albums , from scifi itinerary to glam - rock candy epic . Bowie , like “ Life on Mars ” itself , was princely and full of showmanship , and yet hauntingly otherwordly and transformative . — James Whitbrook

Photo: Jae C. Hong

When I was 12 , I initiate learning guitar , I did n’t really bed how to play anything and I was n’t very dependable . At the time , I was obsess with David Bowie ’s other stuff , Young Americans , Low , Hunky Dory , and of course , Ziggy . When you listened to Ziggy , you could hear that Bowie quality that drove you to click repeat and mind unending . But it was really “ Five Years ” that exhibit me that Bowie was an undeniable colossus . A strain with a field of study so emotionally complex yet built with a simple chord progression . “ Five Years ” was and uphold to be my inviolable pet Bowie song — or really folk rock song in general .

But on today of all day , all I can think about is how ’d I ’d give anything for just five more years of Bowie . — Darren Orf

I admit my Halloween costume from a few years ago was n’t just an homage to Jareth , rather it was an court to an court : I dressed as “ David Bowie from the 1986 moving picture Labyrinth ” hear in the “ Bowie ’s in Space ” episode of Flight of the Conchords — which is in reality one of the estimable celebrations of Bowie ’s eldritch , wild inventiveness out there . I ’m become to watch it again right now and trip the light fantastic magic saltation . — Alissa Walker

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I listened to Ziggy Stardust and Changesonebowie quite a bit as a teen — sometime after I had worn out my written matter of Let ’s Dance , in fact — but it was only in the last few years that I really initiate soaking a fortune in ‘ LXX Bowie . perhaps it was see radical - striking renditions of “ Lady Stardust ” atSister Flora Goodthyme ’s karaokenight . Or maybe it was the haunting purpose of “ Life on Mars ” in the idiot box show of the same name .

But a few long time ago , I start obsessively listening to Bowie ’s ‘ seventy material , way more than I ever had before , specially while writing . His classic stuff is bursting with play and a kind of succulent bizarreness , and he often seems to be utter to someone who ’s place him on the spot . People are trying to immobilize this mercurial fairy down and force him to explain himself , to explicate his gender - refuse , unfixable identity , to sort out all the inconsistency in his tarradiddle , and he always slip by . “ Oh no / not me / I never lose control . ”

Plenty of ‘ 70s rock candy is vaguely operatic , if not declamatory , but nobody else ’s music keep the same intense charge as Bowie ’s , after all this meter . It ’s still as if he ’s speak right to you , date you , and yet deliberately not quite stool sense . — CJA

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